How to love a broken thing
by elegant.malice
Summary: Touka walks on a tight rope all her life while Kaneki breezes past them. After all, he's just as good as walking between the lines as cutting them. (Touken oneshots) Latest: "Curse of the Kakuja" A kakuja is madness and pain, dredging up memories that are sticky with blood and makes her want to throw up and laugh at the same time. (Dark!Touka, Dark!Kaneki)
1. A flower blooms in red snow

**Edit (20/2/15): Changed the cookie-stealing incident to a corpse-stealing incident when Touka was five year old. Thanks to Bacon Powder for pointing that out!**

* * *

Lines are important.

Touka has drawn them so many times she has lost count. Lines define boundaries that she can't cross because the demons on the other side are always watching and always hungry. Lines also tell others to_ go away _and not to push their luck because there are some things Touka can't tell humans who know nothing about just who (what) she is

Touka loves the lines and knows their uses, knows them very well in fact but somehow, Ken Kaneki with that dumb look on his face keeps stepping over the lines. She freezes because no one is allowed to cross the lines, it's against the rules and _god damnit, here he goes walking over them again!_ And even if she glares daggers at him, he's like a dog shrugging snow off its coat: it doesn't bother him.

And it's driving her crazy.

The worst thing is that she knows that he doesn't even realise how easily he's doing all this.

(And the funny thing is, she doesn't even know how easily she _lets_ him do it. But that's the charm of an oblivious girl. Thankfully, Kaneki himself can be quite oblivious too.)

* * *

Some days, her doubts rear their ugly heads and she looks at the humans and thinks 'liabilities' and 'risks'. Other times, it is 'potential ally' and on rare occasions, simply 'friend'.

Today, her emotions run high and insecurities prowl around her thoughts like a caged beast. Whenever she looks at Yoriko, an almost animalistic fear grips her heart. She's scared that somehow Yoriko would find out that she is a Ghoul and then everything would be gone.

"Touka, are you alright?" Yoriko asks, concern tinging her voice, "You've got that lonely and depressed look on your face again."

Touka curses inwardly for that slip in her defense, schooling her expression into one of boredom, "What? Nah, I'm fine."

Yoriko puts her hand on her shoulder (it's as warm as the Sun) and says, "You can tell me anything, Touka, because I'll always be by your side."

Her voice is casual, as if she is commenting on the weather. It's like it didn't mean anything, like it couldn't possibly mean anything but it makes Touka's heart constricts all the same.

Yoriko smiles, withdrawing her hand and her shoulder is suddenly colder without the warmth. She misses it badly, misses the easy gentle grip, misses how it was just a simple touch with no pain or wariness involved.

Hate overwhelms her when she hisses, "Go away, Yoriko, and mind your own business."

She rationalises that it was Yoriko's own fault for stepping out of the line. She pretends that her friend didn't just _flinch_ from her, just as she pretends that she is doing the right thing. Touka knows that she should apologize because Yoriko is a sensitive person. But it is too late; she has drawn the lines that separate them.

Instead, she lets the silence drive in the words like sharp knives cutting into flesh.

(It's strange how those same knives were digging into her heart too.)

Yoriko shrinks away from her, hurt shining in her eyes and they don't exchange a single word even though they're just sitting next to each other in class.

The entire time, Touka sketches lines in her notebook and counts down the seconds till the bell rings.

* * *

After school, she walks to Anteiku and upon reaching, she sees Kaneki sweeping the floor. He looks up and holds her gaze, a long piercing stare that seems as if he can see right into her soul. It's like when she was five years old again and her dad had caught her in the act for stealing bits of food from the cemetary's inhabitants because she was hungry.

It's making her feel small and guilty and so very exposed.

She bristles.

Caustic words are at the tip of her tongue, barbed things ready to lash out. Then, Kaneki blinks and she forcibly calms herself because Kaneki is just Kaneki who greets her with an easy smile and a lazy wave; just like any other day.

See? Nothing to hide.

She acknowledges him with a nod and surprisingly, Kaneki heads towards her and begins to ramble on about his latest fighting technique and she would comment on them, really, if not for the fact that regret swirls in her head at this morning's incident.

She stalks past him to isolate herself in the kitchen but he follows behind, talking about all manner of things. Annoyance wells up like a tide and drowns out the feelings of self hatred and bitterness, leaving with it prickly anger and irritation at her co-worker. Ugh, leave me alone.

_Stupid jerk keeps sticking to me like a leech. Che, how annoying_. With a growl, she attacks the counter with a mixture of annoyance and frustration at Kaneki's stubbornness.

"Hey Touka, could you tell me how to make the coffee again? I kinda forgot hahaha," Kaneki asks, sheepishly scratching his cheek.

Scowling, Touka snaps at his perceived ineptness. (A small part of Touka screeches bullshit! Kaneki never forgets this sort of simple things! She silences it.)

"Could you help me with the dishes? I need a hand here."

Looking around, the store isn't that crowded so a little breather wouldn't be too bad. She shrugs, roll her eyes and plunge her hands into the warm soapy froth next to him.

"So busy day today, huh?" He enquires.

Touka grunts a monosyllabic reply and the space of a few inches between them feels like a chasm. And like a true foolish traveller, Kaneki jumps forward.

"The customers are getting more demanding. Just this morning..." And that's when Touka tunes him out. Kaneki is...nice but he can be really annoying sometimes.

The day passes with Kaneki like an ever present shadow that _just wouldn't shut up_. No matter how many times she snaps at him like an irate bear rudely woken from hibernation, it looks as if Kaneki was resolute in pissing the hell out of her.

(Somehow, she gets the feeling that he's secretly amused at how easily it is to rile her up.)

* * *

At the end of the day, sore and tired and just wanting to go back home and bury herself in her blankets, does a thought slams into her: Ken Kaneki is _never_ this talkative.

Unbidden, she remembers the look that Kaneki had given her when she first stepped in today, the one that seemed as if he saw past her (half-hearted) glares and knew more than he let on. As if...

\- oh.

The pieces in her head click neatly in place and she finds herself thinking of his coal black hair and the earnest smiles he reserves gives her. And the way he had told all sorts of lame jokes that made her want to laugh and throttle him at the same time. And his incessant chatter that kept distracting her like...like..._he was trying to cheer her up._

Her heart does a weird little flop and she suddenly trips over her feet. I'm such a klutz, she thinks.

Wait, I'm NOT a clumsy oaf. Being a ghoul does have it perks. She looks at her feet with something resembling betrayal. Did she just trip over air because she was thinking of Kaneki?

Looking at the unobstructed pathway behind her, she gets her answer.

Something feels off balance because she never expects Kaneki, a naive, puny and dumb kid whom she had recently met, to do such a thing for her.

No one has ever thought that Touka needs to be comforted. With a fearsome scowl on her face, people take one look at her and flee in the opposite direction. Even the manager knows when to leave her alone.

Yet Kaneki has done the opposite.

Irritation worms in her gut: _Pah, that punk. Think he's so caring, isn't he? _

There isn't a warm glow in her chest that seeps all the way to her toes. Nothing at all. Neither is there a fuzziness that buzzes in her veins. Nope. Nothing at all. Nada. Zilch. Seriously.

She blows hair out of face, spewing obscenities at Kaneki for daring to think she is some weak little girl in need of help. Stomping up the steps to her bedroom, she slams the door and throws her bag on the bed.

Lines. Lines were important because if she didn't draw them properly, the most unassuming of all people would slip in between them and nestle into her heart.

Collapsing on the bed, she mutters, "Damn you, Kaneki," and a small part of her adds _and damn me too._

* * *

This is the start of a friendship that may just turn into something more. Because lines don't just set boundaries, they can lead you towards a different path too.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks for reading this fic! Just trying my hand at romance so if it's not too much trouble, I would love to hear what you thought of it. Most appreciated! :D**


	2. And the world she knows crumble

A/N: (edit 22/12/14) Rewrote some portions, fixed up grammar mistakes and such and formatting has been set. Although, if anyone knows how to do a strikethrough on ff, help would be most appreciated. This fic is unbeta'ed so don't hesitate to let me know if you find any more errors. Thank you for reading!

* * *

Working at Anteiku leaves Touka a lot of opportunities to watch both humans and ghouls interact. She learns a lot in general and this helps to shape her views of the world, forming a tapestry in her mind's eye.

What does being a ghoul mean? Have you ever thought about it? Do you think it means having a kagune and cutting down your opponents? Or how about hunting down the humans, enjoying the way they scream and run away when they see you? Like an alpha predator, top of the food chain and reigning supreme.

Well, that's what Touka originally thought. Born as a ghoul just like her brother, she only manifests her kagune if it was to protect her brother or herself. Many a times that has happened, for history is cru

el but humans are the cruelest. Her memories are awash with neighbours and 'friends' that have turned on her the moment they realise that she isn't human. Even till today, the slap of betrayal still stings.

But being a ghoul is so much more, more than the blood and madness, more than the strength and speed and (the joy of killing.)

Most of all, being a ghoul is lonely. It's scary too, because humans always destroy what they do not know or do not understand, and they will hunt them down to the ends of the earth and eliminate her kind just because they can.

"Behave yourself or the ghouls will come and eat you up!"

A child shrieks and apologises tearfully to her mother.

"Your breath stinks like a ghoul!"

"Oh yea? You look just like one yourself!"

"There was a ghoul sighting in the next street from here. It's so scary! I wish all these ghouls would just die. Like what did we ever do to them anyway?"

"I totally agree with you! They're such horrible creatures, feasting on humans. They should suffer the worst death for that."

"If I see a ghoul, I'll fucking kill it."

The plate in her grip cracks. Sometimes, having an excellent hearing isn't as wonderful as it seems.

And people wonder why Touka hates humans, hates them so so much, for being a bunch of fearful pigs squealing in their death throes. Like lambs to slaughter. How much hypocrisy they possess; as if the wars didn't happen, as if children weren't sent out to the battlefields to die, as if men had not killed their own brothers with their bare hands.

_They're disgusting. _(She is resolutely not thinking about Yoriko now, some things she still aren't sure what to classify as. Yoriko is human but she is nice to Touka, letting her copy notes and helping her whenever she is stumped by homework. Either way, she's human and it's only a matter of time.)

Touka may never admit it but she is scared and jealous of humans. What must it like to live their life so free, without the constant threat of being found out? Humans have a lot of friends; they come to Anteiku in droves and chatter excitedly, eyes bright and hands waving animatedly, warm laughter washing over the atmosphere.

Yet, she never has that. She has always been running with her father and Ayato ever since she was young as they move from place to place.

It's funny but she thinks she doesn't really belong anywhere.

Until Anteiku, that is.

It's not a place where happiness constantly surrounds her but it's a place where she can be slightly less tensed, slightly less guarded around her own. They're all ghouls and they share the same scars. It's enough.

So that's what Touka's view on being a ghoul. A sad existence. A lonely one. Steeped in destruction and pain and bringing nothing but misfortune to those around them. These little threads of knowledge twist and weave around each other, forming a tapestry of the boundaries that define her entire world.

Of course, like a true Kaneki fashion, the moment he enters her life, her entire tapestry starts to unravel right before her very eyes.

_Oh just damn you, Kaneki._

* * *

Threads begin to frays when Kaneki teaches her that she doesn't have to push herself so hard. That it's ok to fail.

The fighting lessons she has with him are at night, after a busy day of school and working at Anteiku. She's tired; she still needs to finish her homework for tomorrow and her projects are due soon. But she figures that Kaneki's case takes priority over them because without these lessons, he's going to be a sitting duck.

He is still a new ghoul, all doe-eyed and blinking confusion. The blows from his kagune are hesitant and weak, barely hurting her at all. She might as well be fighting a giant toy plushie. Who lets out a muffled groan from the floor.

"Ow..."

"You're not going to improve if you pull your punches like that. Rize's kagune is capable of a rapid onslaught of attacks. Try again!" Frustration leaks into her voice as she watches him struggle to get up. She had a bad day in school today and all she wants is just a peaceful lesson but noooo, Kaneki must be that one slow kid who needs to have the teacher slam the textbook into his face if he is going to learn anything at all. (But that's a huge lie, Kaneki is ridiculously smart. He's in the top university and Touka knows that but all she can see now is this puny kid who can barely fight properly. It's really frustrating.)

"Activate your kagune!"

He gets up to his feet slowly and tendrils of darkness snake around him, thick writhing bands that encircle his body menacingly.

It looks intimidating but Touka really doesn't care. She'll only be scared if he proves to her that he is worthy of her fear. Otherwise, his kagune is just for show.

She launches a swift uppercut, her shadow wings lashing through the air. One of Kaneki's tendrils lifts up to deliver a clumsy block - too late; her kagune slices a portion of his hair away. Kaneki's eyes widen comically.

"You're not taking this serious enough! If you're giving this kind of shitty defense to your enemy, then you're better off dead!" She snaps, her wings flaring out in anger as blood-red veins glow within the inky black. Her anger masks a sharp jagged relief for she had almost killed him. Almost.

"I am taking this seriously, you know," he counters, a small frown on his face.

She sneers, "Prove it." That's all the warning she gives before she throws herself at him, jagged wings snapping open.

She feints a punch and Kaneki, only seeing her rapidly approaching fist, twists to the side and ends up getting a knee to his stomach. The breath leaves his lungs with a whoosh.

She grips him by his collar and flings his body to the air, and then she sends up three swift cuts. Red lines open on his cheek, neck and chest before gravity takes over and he crashes to the ground.

"That's 3 times I could have killed you. So get _serious_."

Putting a hand on the floor, he slowly pushes himself up.

"I am serious, Touka," he smiles, looking unbothered by the affair even if he is dripping blood on the floor.

She growls and stalks towards him, "You're fucking not." She is tired and exhausted from schooling and working on the same day and she is _not_ going to deal with his attitude.

"Guess I have to show you, huh?" His warm brown eyes twinkle as he stands up and faces her.

"Yes," the words are barely out of her mouth before his tendrils wrap itself around her torso, trapping her arms. Her kagune pierces through the tentacles and the hold loosens, allowing her to jump onto a high beam. Another rope of crimson shoots out and shatters the beam that she is standing on, wood splintering in all directions. As she tries to avoid getting speared by shrapnel she loses her balance and plunges rapidly to the ground. Too late, she looks up and she can't avoid his kagune whipping towards her.

Her hair blows back from her face so the crimson veins in her black eyes are visible. She shuts her eyes, braces herself for impact. Something soft grabs her leg before she jerks up, her fall halted.

She opens her eyes and sees Kaneki's face...except the view is drastically altered. Oh, she's hanging upside down in the air. She looks down (up?) and sees his kagune wrap around her legs. So that's what has stopped her fall.

His other tendrils slowly move towards her. He is watching her the entire time and she grits her teeth and doesn't flinch when she feels the first soft touch on her neck, followed by her torso, arms and legs.

Her heart is thudding loudly in her chest and she fears that he might hear it.

"That's four different ways I could kill you," he says softly, his kagune gently twining around her. He holds her there for another nerve-wracking moment before gently putting her - feet first - on the ground.

"G-g-good job. Improve... I mean you've improved, what a surprise," she says, avoiding his gaze.

"Thank you, Touka. I feel like I've learnt a lot today," amusement laces his voice as he catches sight of the mild flush on her face.

_That little shit._

Kaneki may have bested her this time but it somehow, it feels like the whole world is out to get her today, her attempts to remain cool failing spectacularly. In school, she failed four out of her five tests and she has to see the teachers. Fingernails cut into her palms the whole time they talk to her, and she doesn't have to look up to see the disappointment that she just _knows_ will be in their gaze, Also, she has to deal with a bunch of unruly and rude customers and her patience has been wearing thin the entire day.

Before the moment spirals out of control, she gathers what is left of her dignity. She musn't let him know that she's shaken up so she lets anger bleeds over and lashes out, "Why is that you do this now when you could have done it earlier? You're wasting both of our time with your false incompetence. Next time an enemy shows up you're going to spend the first hour like a punching bag? You're going to die, you moron. And then what? You're going to leave Hinami and me and everyone at Anteiku who ever cared about you alone cause you were too much of a dumb shit to use your kagune properly!"

She's trembling slightly from the outburst, eyes aflame and he why on Earth does he have a soft, tender look in his gaze? The hell is wrong with him? She really doesn't know what to do, what to say so she does what she does best: she glares.

"It's fine, you know. You always worry too much about people and - don't even try to argue," he says when he catches her open her mouth to let out a scathing retort no doubt. She closes her mouth.

"You're always pushing yourself, whether it's you working overtime at Anteiku even though you're tired or during the battles when you're injured badly but you're still fighting. And the reason why you push yourself is because you're scared, aren't you?"

A snarl builds up from her throat, "Don't you dare think that you know even a single damn thing about me!" Her kagune unfurls, a dark shroud of danger that looms behind her.

He doesn't even blink, just continue on, "You push yourself because you don't want to lose them, do you? And the reason why you are so harsh on me is because you don't want me to get hurt. Your focus during the lessons is defense moves but you and I both know my rinkaku type of kagune has a lot of brute power in it. You should be teaching me offensive moves instead."

Something snaps. "You want offensive? I'll give you offensive," she snarls and leaps forward to attack.

Clumsy. Too clumsy.

She always loses her temper too quickly with him. It's just something that Kaneki notices. She tends to do a one shot knockout, using her kagune like a huge cleaver and slicing down on her opponent.

He sidesteps neatly to the right and her kagune barely misses him. The floor, being immobile, is not so lucky. Her kagune meets with it with a boom and the floor cracks from the force of her attack, sending a shower of concrete into the air.

In the sudden silence, he calls out, "Touka, I'm not trying to call you out. All I'm saying...is that it's okay to be scared and I respect that you are trying to protect us. It's just...you don't have to pretend that you're strong all the time."

His voice sounds impossibly gentle, as if soothing a wounded animal and Touka hears the concern and warmth in it, feels like his words struck bone deep within, a kernel of truth that hits home. He knows too much and she feels cornered with no way out and she is tired of having her heart out in the open and flinching from the knives that never come.

"We'll call it a day," she says curtly, wanting to be as far away from him as possible. His eyes...they see too much. It feels like a cowardly retreat but right now, she doesn't know how to deal with this. Her head is a mess, thoughts jumping and skittering about with no clear direction.

"Next lesson. Thursday, 7.30pm," she snaps.

She turns around and stalks off even though her mind is screaming at her to just pick up the pace and run run run _away_ already. But she has her pride, thank you very much, and walks off with her typical poise.

When the next lesson comes, she is in a better mood. She doesn't feel as tired as last time because she only has school today. Using the sadly-not-an-excuse-but-the-real-truth, she tells Yoshimura that she needs more time to study because her grades are slipping and he agrees immediately. It frees up her time remarkably, giving her time to (reflect on Kaneki's words) and catch up on her studies.

And if the next combat lesson focuses on extremely aggressive and offensive moves that require split second decision-making and fast reflexes, both of which a particular ghoul is lacking in, then the breaking of Kaneki's collarbone comes of no surprise to anybody. In fact, Touka thinks that he is being let off lightly for his insolence. It only takes thirty minutes for his bones to fuse, during which, Touka takes great satisfaction in calling him a 'slow moving snail crawling along the floor'. Kaneki hides a smile; his fracture is a clean break which makes the healing smoother and less painful. '_She's such a softie,' _he thinks, as he sits on the ground to watch her storm around the room.

Even though they end later than usual because Touka refuses to consider the time taken for him to heal as part of the lessons, none of them actually mind. Not that they'll ever admit it in a million years. After all, it's always nice to spend time with those you care about, right?

While Touka may have actually listened to someone's advice and taken it to heart for once, in the end, Kaneki is still an idiot and Touka is still a violent person. Some things just never change.

Silently, her threads start to unspool and parts of the tapestry disappear into a mess of ropes.

* * *

Another part of the tapestry starts to go indistinct when he tells that to move into the future, she needs to make peace with the past.

She is walking around in the mall, looking for a book called The Black Goat's Egg. Yes, she hates literature but hearing Kaneki sing praises about it, flushed and excited about the plot and character development, well she just has to take a look at it. It was the first time she had seen Kaneki so overly talkative and literally gushing like a twelve year old girl. Amused barely covers what she had felt. And now, with her curiosity piques, she spends her time searching for that stupid book that is sold out at _six_ different book stores. It seems to be a very popular book, she notes quizzically.

Now, this isn't just a normal shopping trip, this is _war._ She grits her teeth and stomps off to find another book store, stubbornly sniffing out the last available copies at a small store hidden by other retail outlets.

"Onee san, I want this book," a young boy around ten years old tugs on his older sister's skirt.

"It's too expensive," she tells him, a sad smile on her face. She looks only about two years older than him and yet, Touka can see exhaustion etch on her young face.

Touka cranes her neck and sees that the boy is pointing to a colouring book. The sister squats in front of him, placing both hands on his shoulder, "I'm sorry but it's just the two of us. Dad and mum are gone. One day I'll earn enough money then I can buy these things for you so don't be sad, alright?"

He nods, and throws his arms around her, "It's okay. I'm happy right now because I have you here."

The walls seem suddenly too constructive and she feels like an intruder, caught up in a private moment. Touka hurries to the cashier to pay for the book, takes too long a time trying to count the money with her hands that is shaking and shaking and it won't fucking stop.

"Are you ok?" The cashier eyes her worriedly.

She jerks a nod, hands over the exact amount and book in hand, pelts out of the store. She can't breathe, can barely see past the tears in her eyes that appear unexpectedly.

A name, buried beneath countless other memories, slips past her lips: _Ayato._

Always protecting him, caring about his wellbeing and ensuring that he has enough food in his belly. Nights spent shivering underneath cardboard, when they were too poor to rent a house. Day after day roaming the streets, stalking for prey and defending their territory, they were called the Demon Siblings. They were close and fought tooth and nail if another was threatened.

Until Ayato began to question about their father, saw him as someone who was weak and pathetic, and he may be dead but Touka still fiercely defended her father's honour. So they had argued and fought and blood is thicker than water but not anymore. The last thing she saw as she laid bleeding on the ground from the numerous wounds was Ayato's look of complete and utter disdain, before he turned his back on her and walked off.

"Don't look for me," he told her coldly.

She'd watched until his back got smaller and smaller before she lost consciousness. That was years ago.

Maybe it's pathetic of her, to keep thinking about him, wondering if he is doing fine. Because it feels like she is a dog that got abandoned by her owner and still stubbornly pawing at the owner's door to let her in. Every time she sees something that reminds her of Ayato, she has to shut her eyes and pretend that _everything is fine, okay? So just leave it._

The sister and the brother at the book store... A past that she once had, and a future that she has now lost.

The pain is fierce, feral and completely unfair.

In a daze, she walks and walks and finally finds herself stopping at a familiar place: Anteiku. Might as well anyway. She wipes away her tears and composes herself, clamps down upon her feelings with an iron will until she is her usual cool and calm self before pushing the door open.

"Welcome, Touka."

She freezes and looks up.

Oh, she forgot. Kaneki is on duty today.

Then he notices the book that she is hugging to her chest and his eyes practically bulge out of his sockets.

"You're reading this?" He asks, his voice high with excitement

"Mind your own business."

She grabs a place for herself at the corner of the cafe, giving a wave to her colleagues.

As she settles down for a comfortable read, she realises that someone is sitting opposite her. With a big grin on his face.

"I can't believe you're reading this. I think you'll really enjoy it."

Oh hell no, she's not going to read it in front of him.

"Aren't you on duty?" She snaps.

He shrugs. "Yoshimura says I can take the day off since today isn't very crowded. I was just about to leave when you walked in with The Black Goat's Egg." His tone takes on a reverential quality when he says the title and Touka has to tamper down her annoyance. _What's with this book anyway?_

"Mind if I sit here?" He asks sweetly.

"Yes," she grounds out, "I just want to read in peace. Alone."

He gives her a hurt look, and slides out of the chair, "Alright, but let me know what you think about it."

Flipping to the first page, she starts reading. The muffled shout of 'Bye Touka' barely registers and she waves a hand distractedly, eyes glued to the page.

She stays until the café closes, feverishly devouring the book like Kaneki does, even as she is walking home. She reads and reads and feels the plot grip her by the throat and never let go.

The next day, she rapidly dials Kaneki's number.

"Why did he do it? Why did he set fire to his house? He liked that house, it's where he was the happiest and all the good memories were in there. But yea, there are also the bad memories when he finds out about his mum but why, I just don't get why he's erasing his past."

A moment of silence in the other end of the line before Kaneki erupts into laugher.

"What?" she asks peevishly.

When the laughter subsides, he asks, "Did you stay up all night just to finish it?"

She glances at herself in the mirror, sees her messy hair and bitten fingernails, the eye bags and crumpled clothes.

"No," she lies.

Traces of mirth are present in his voice, "Sure. You must be a fast reader then."

"Oh just get to the point. Why did he do it?"

"You really don't know?"

"...Yea."

"It's because he's trapped in the past, thinking about all the times he assumed he was normal. But he never was. In the end, he embraces his darker impulses but he still retains his kindness since he gave his mum a merciful death. He wants to move on the future, and his past was always preventing him from doing so. Do you remember when he saw the toy car he used to have? And has a complete meltdown about it, screwing up the mission so bad that one of his friends were killed? It's a trigger that forces him to face the fact that his past was going to pull him down."

"But he was happy in the past!" She protests.

"Yes," comes the reply, "but don't forget that because he always kept trying to return to his past, he ended up abandoning his future. All he saw were just ghosts and echoes of familiarity, but never anything more."

"He's going to just erase his past like that? That's stupid."

"No Touka, he's not. The past would always remain in his memories, he can never erase the past but he just learns to let go. To embrace the future possibilities. It's like freeing oneself from the weight of the past and that gives him the strength to move on."

"..."

"In a way, he's not stuck anymore. He can now move forward instead of being haunted by his past," Kaneki's voice takes on a gentle tone, "and now, the things in his past can't hurt him anymore."

She sucks in a breath, not realising that she has been holding it the entire time. His last words seem to be aim at her but how could he possible know? Must be a coincidence. This book. Why it's similar to her life as a ghoul. Coincidence, that's right. Just that.

"I see," she says quietly.

" I assume you like it?" He asks and she can hear the smile in his voice.

"Yea, I do. I've got to go now. Thank you, Kaneki."

"You're welcome, Touka," he says warmly before the call ends.

She collapses on her bed, staring at the white washed ceiling. She thinks about the past, how it feels like a shadow of grief that constricts her heart daily, pressing her dry and empty. It's not good. _To let go, huh?_

She recalls the taste of blood in her mouth, tears sliding down her cheeks as her vision blurs. Ayato, just a figure in the distance.

_Yea, I guess some things should remain in the past._

Buried beneath the pain and betrayal, she remembers Ayato's smile, the bright way he greets her when she comes home and the way he throws himself around her waist, exclaiming, "Welcome home!"

It's been a long time but she smiles when she thinks of that memory now, precious beyond belief. Her heart feels lighter, as if the book was a kind of catharsis that expels all her negative emotion till she is left with peaceful solace. (Or maybe it's just Kaneki's words but no, she is still not ready to admit it to anyone. Or herself.)

Exhaustion overcomes her and her eyes slide shut. She sinks into a peaceful slumber.

She awakes later in the day feeling refreshed and finds that Monochrome Rainbow, another book by the same author as The Black Goat' Egg, can only be found in the same bookstore that she first bought her book.

The cashier smiles knowingly when she sees it in her hands.

"The author is highly talented," she remarks.

Touka receives her change and smiles back, "Absolutely."

Stepping out of the store, she sees the same brother and sister. They're holding hands and walking towards the book store, some notes clutch tightly in the sister's hand and the boy looking like he is going to receive a huge present. Maybe he is.

She puts two and two together and comes to a decision.

As she walks home that day, a spring in her step and an upturn of her lips, she recalls the look of surprised joy on their faces when she hands over a bag of colouring pencils and the colouring book that the boy wanted. She even threw in a copy of a popular children book because children really should read. It's good for them.

She may be a few dollars lighter but dang, does she feel like she can float to the sky now.

_The past can't hurt him anymore._

Kaneki's words pass through her mind and she thinks that setting fire to a house may be overdoing things a bit, but she understands the main character's intention and it's alright, she supposes. The significance is still there.

The dark patch on the tapestry, that has been present ever since it was weaved, slowly lightens to form a warm brown colour then turns gold. The threads unravel; golden lines that float gently around in the space.

There is only a small part of the tapestry left. The fabric shivers and some fibers begin to unravel.

* * *

The last thing Kaneki teaches her that ghouls can be gentle. Impossibly and unbelievably gentle.

A ghoul's body is a killing machine; RC cells are meant to harden, to cut through flesh and their tongue is attuned to the perfect symphony of human blood and meat. Violence and death is in their nature, it is weaved into their DNA. You cannot blame a wolf for killing, do you?

And yet, there are ghouls like Hinami. And yet, there are ghouls who kill for survival and only that, nothing more. And yet, even a wolf seeks solace and company in its pack. And yet, and yet, and yet. Exceptions, distinct entities from the majority, unique in their own moral codes.

Sometimes, the stain of blood is so corrosive that Touka looks at the pale flesh of her hands and sees crimson coating them._ Unclean_. No matter how much she scrubs, it's still there in the corner of her eye.

But Kaneki is still new into the world of ghouls, still unsullied and innocent. A bright flare that lights up the gloom in her life and she finds herself inextricably drawn to this gentle soul.

Touka chalks it up to curiosity about how Kaneki copes with the destruction lying hidden within his cell so she decides to keep an eye on him. Shut up, she is not stalking him goddamnit. Just making sure he is adjusted, that's all. Some people are just seeing things that _aren't there._

Kaneki eats his breakfast at 9.00am on the weekends and look; she was just passing by his house by accident and caught sight of him adding blood cubes into his coffee, practically inhaling it. He sighs happily, closing his eyes and wrapping his hands around the mug as if to savour the warmth.

When he finishes his drink, he trails his fingers along the spines of his books that line up his apartment, a smile on his face. Then he'll root around the house for a bag of...cat food? Oh, he's leaving the house. Ah shit, shit shit! She darts behind the staircase.

Apparently, Kaneki feeds stray cats. Even though they can smell the ghoul on him because they seemed hesitant to approach him, they don't hiss or swipe at him with their claws. She knows, she has tried approaching strays before. But it must be because he's only a half ghoul so maybe the smell isn't that strong. He leaves a bowl of the cat food and sits back on his heels, waiting for the cats to pad out.

"Hello Kuro," he coos at a black cat with golden eyes, scratching it under the chin. Its eyes narrow into slits and a purr rumbles in its chest, hopping onto his lap and looking as contented as a cat can be.

A white cat paws mournfully at his knee, and he laughs, picks it up and deposits it onto his lap. "And hello to you too, Shiro." The black cat, Kuro, shoots Shiro an annoyed look, if that is possible, and proceeded to climb up his shoulders, looking down at the other cat in disdain.

"Don't fight, you guys," Kaneki smiles, stroking Shiro and that cat must have an engine in his chest because it is purring rather loudly.

Watching him looking so happy like that, her theory falls apart. It isn't because he is a half ghoul that the cats approach him. Rather, it's because he knows these cats, he must have fed them often enough until they remember him. Even if he does smell a bit off, like blood and danger, the cats still know it is him underneath it all, the boy who feeds them and plays with them ever since they were first abandoned as small kittens in the neighbourhood. It feels like there's a lump in her throat and she doesn't even know why.

Maybe it's because the cats recognise that it's him underneath the taint, like being a ghoul doesn't change the fact that they still consider him as a friend. His slim fingers caress their fur gently, so impossibly gently and something twists violently in her chest.

She thinks of the people who found out that she was a ghoul, remembers the fear in their eyes and she compares it with the adoration shining in the cats' who plaster themselves over him. She has to walk away from the scene because the trust in the cats' eyes is too much to bear. It's like her insides have been scrape open. She still can hear Kaneki's clear laughter as his cats amuse him with their antics.

She has a 2pm shift today at Anteiku so she returns home and tries not to think too much about this.

As she goes about her work and she tends to the customers, she finds a familiar face.

"Good afternoon, Touka," Kaneki greets, looking up from the book he is reading. He decides to spend his weekend at Anteiku to finish up on another book.

She nods and inquires, "Hello, is there anything I can get you?"

"A coffee with a foam drawing, please," he says and offers her a smile.

She returns it because it's professional policy to smile at customers and Yomo will scold her if she has a 'resting face' on, an expression akin to a bored panther deciding whether it should tear off your face or rip off your head. In short, something that customers don't want to witness.

She returns with a cup of steaming coffee, adding a blood cube inside because Kaneki is looking pale lately and she just wants him to be able to fight properly during the next combat lesson, that's all. A picture of rabbit floats gently in the coffee, and Kaneki takes it from her with a warm smile. Her eye catches on black and white fur on his lap.

"Enjoy your coffee, sir," she says stiffly before heading back to the counter.

He uses his phone to snap a picture of his coffee, the rabbit face smiling at the camera before he slips his phone back into his pocket. Taking a sip of his drink, he gives a small smile as he realises the extra ingredient inside. The front door bursts open and Hinami runs in, "Kaneki-kun!"

"You're just in time for our lessons, Hinami-chan," he says, and puts away his book.

She clambers onto the chair and takes out the homework Kaneki had assigned to her last week. Touka makes her way over, a smile blossoming on her face as she catches sight of the girl which she considers as a sister.

"Touka onee-san! It's good to see you," she beams.

She places a plate of cup of coffee in front of her, "On the house, but you must study hard, alright?"

Hinami's eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, " I will! Thank you so much!"

Kaneki watches the exchange with fondness in his eyes.

The day passes quickly; with Touka sneaking glances at the two to make sure everything is ok. Watching how patient and encouraging Kaneki is with Hinami, who is equally hard working and determined, sends a wave of tenderness through her heart. _Goddamnit, I'm such an inverte__rate sap_ she thinks to herself, unable to wipe the smile of her face.

Weeks later, Yomo is off on a mission and Yoshimura sends Kaneki with her to the cliffs at night to collect the bodies of those who have committed suicide. By some unlucky coincidence, they come face to face with some CCG investigators. Touka curses.

There are five of them, they don't have quinque with them but their guns are up and there is no mercy in their eyes.

"I'll distract them while you take this bag and run," Touka says and activates her kagune. Under the faint moonlight, the scarlet veins in her wings glow even more ominously, making her look like a true predator of the night.

"Wait," he places a hand on her shoulder until she faces him, "Do you trust me?"

She wants to snap at him that now isn't the time but something in his eyes stop her.

"Yes," she answers.

"Then let me distract them while you run," he says quietly, tone brooking no argument.

She stares at him, sees the seriousness glinting in his eyes like steel, then nods, "Be careful."

Her kagune melts into the air and she picks up the bag and she is running, running, gone.

The first shot rings out, but it's blocked by his kagune. His mask is on his face before he steps forward, "I don't want to hurt you."

The barrage of fire answers him and he ducks away. A stray bullet clips his leg and be stumbles.

"Get him!"

A tentacle slams into one of the investigators and the unlucky bloke finds himself smashing into tree after tree after tree. He blacks out.

The others hiss angrily and open fire again. Another bullet grazes Kaneki's arm but he barely flinches. The men then find themselves hanging upside down by their legs, a rope of muscle gripping them tightly. Their shots decrease in accuracy thereafter.

"Look, we both want to live. Now put down your guns and knives and I promise, I swear I'll let you go."

A bullet flies past his ear.

"Oh yea? What makes you think we can believe you?"

Another bullet buries itself inches from his foot.

"Would you prefer if I kill you all right this moment?" Kaneki snaps. He's trying not to but the blood in the air is making it harder to think.

He breathes hard, glaring at each and every one of them.

One of the guys drops his gun with a clatter. And another. Soon, all four of them have done it.

"Thank you," he says.

Then he throws them up into the air and disappears into the forest. They let out a surprised shout, before dropping onto a pile of bushes which break their fall, shaken up but unharmed. The only injury sustained that night was the man who was thrown into the trees. He suffered a few broken ribs and had bruises all over but he was fine and something told him he had gotten off lucky. Everyone thought the same way about themselves too.

Kaneki stumbles out of the forest, entering the urban areas and he takes care to keep to the alleys. The bullet wound on his leg has stopped bleeding but it throbs in time with every breath. Yet the pain lessens as minutes pass, the regenerative power of his half ghoul body kicking in. _I hope Touka is okay,_ he thinks, one hand on the wall as he shuffles along.

As he steps over a pile of rubbish, the feeling of being watched sends the hairs on his neck tingling.

Very slowly, he looks up.

"You're too kind, Kaneki." She is standing on the roof with a frown on her face and her arms folded, a perfect picture of disapproval.

He lets out a sigh, then realises that his mask is still on his face. He removes it and drops his hand, the mask hanging at his side.

A potent aura of displeasure emits from Touka but he makes his stand and continues to look at her.

In one eye, there is the warm brown hue of a human and in the other, the vivid clash of black and red swirling in the depths of a ghoul.

"Being kind...is that so bad?" His eyes are bright and open as he patiently waits for an answer.

Touka is stunned. She knew what happened in the forest; of course he let them off. Didn't even give them any scars. But he ended up getting hurt goddamnit and she won't have that. So here she is confronting him about it and she was expecting him to be defensive or angry. But this? Calmly accepting that yes, he is an absolute and complete _baka_ for sparing the lives of the enemies? And now he is asking if kindness is really that bad?

Yet, from the way Kaneki looks at her like she is the one who is hurt, with gentle compassion and earnest understanding gleaming in his eyes, she finds herself fixed to the spot and lost for words.

They stay silent for a long time, watching each other under the gentle cast of the moon as the wind smooth over their faces.

Touka is the one who breaks eye contact first.

"You have the afternoon shift at Anteiku tomorrow. Don't be late."

There is a faint whisper of fabric before Touka vanishes off the roof. He stares at the place where she used to be, speaking softly and knowing that only a ghoul can hear him clearly, "Goodnight, Touka."

She ignores him. It's possible for ghouls to be kind, to choose when to kill even if their lives are threatened. Hidden in the shadows, Touka mulls over Kaneki's stand.

When there is no reply forthcoming, Kaneki isn't surprised. He's not expecting it anyway. He knows that she doesn't like it when he ends up hurt but he thinks it's possible that both humans and ghouls can work together. He knows it. Testing his used-to-be-injured-leg, he is satisfied that he is completely healed and he continues walking.

And if he notices a particular shadow flitting from roof to roof as he makes his way home, then he's kind enough to just accept that this is just how things are going to be. Besides, even if he does argue about it, she would deny it all the way to her last breath.

Kaneki grins to himself.

After all, how many people can say that they have their very own guardian angel ghoul?

Touka may not agree with his stand, but she can look after him from the sidelines.

* * *

The last thread snaps and her tapestry, the very world that she stands upon crumbles into dust. The floor below her disappears. Touka shuts her eyes as she is flung into freefall, wind whipping her face as the feeling of weightlessness overcomes her. As she falls, she braces herself for the impact, knowing that Kaneki has destroyed all her ropes. All that awaits her below is a shattered body.

But no, that's not right. She isn't falling. Her eyes snap open and she sees that her kagune is unfurled, black wings catching an updraft and pushing her upwards.

She smiles then, bright and giddy with joy because she isn't falling, oh no, not by a long shot.

She's _soaring._

And the lines that she weaves no longer hold any significance, so she releases her tapestry to the wind. Lines may define boundaries, but they can easily trap her inside too. But with the threads drifting away, Touka flies into a new world.

A thought suddenly pops up in her mind. _Kaneki would be proud._

It takes a moment before she processes it. Of course her moment of triumph is ruined by Him. Of course it does. Her life is a fucking tragedy.

The euphoria from her self-reflection and self-actualization drains away.

Why is she even thinking about him now? He keeps interfering with her life and meddling in her brain, always getting hurt too easily and he can barely fight properly because he hits like a girl. He's absolutely annoying.

Her phone chimes a reminder, interrupting her reverie and she cracks open her eye to read it: Meeting with Kaneki for extra kagune offense lessons.

On her bed, she rolls over and puts a pillow over her head.

She groans_. Argh, what a pain._

* * *

**A/N: Nice to know that when the lessons of the world begin to lose their meaning, Touka decides to embrace her ghoul side. Oh, regarding The Black Goat's Egg, I don't cl****aim to know the exact plot, I just made it up. XD**

**Hope you enjoy it! If it's not too much trouble, please leave a comment to share what you thought about this fic. It's always nice to hear from readers. Thank you!**


	3. Just a small flame burning in my heart

**A/N1: I quite like the idea of people looking out for and/or teasing Touka but is oblivious about how everyone is working together. And thus, this fic was born.**

**Many thanks to my amazing beta xxxDreamingFlowerxxx. You're awesome! Any remaining mistakes are mine.**

**(Additional thanks to TheLuckyFish for pointing out that I accidentally uploaded chapter 2 twice. This is now the correct version for chapter 3)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Fire and ice have a strange relationship. Both need each other to exist and yet, when they are put together, they become locked in conflict, each trying to cancel each other out. The result?

A contradiction. An endless paradox in itself.

Touka may not know it, but she herself is full of contradictions. She may say one thing but act like another. Being an intelligent person, Kaneki has long since realised this particular trait in Touka. Not that he's going to point it out to her, of course. He still prefers his head attached to his neck and his body in one piece. He doesn't have a death wish.

So he decides to keep quiet about the times, where her cold facade cracks a little, and her concern and worry seeping through her impenetrable armour.

Tsukiyama had told Touka that she has changed. A lot. The ice in her gaze no longer as cold as it used to be.

But of course, if ice melts, then fire must take its place.

While walking along the upper levels of Anteiku, Touka knows that Kaneki is teaching Hinami and decided to drop by. As she walked past the door, she noticed that it's ajar and there is a small crack. She peered in.

Her jaw dropped. Kaneki was in a compromising position with Hinami and Touka immediately feared the worst for her.

"KANEKI! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Touka slammed the door open and barged into the room, eyes wild.

The person in question was currently sitting on the floor, with Hinami's face hovering very closely to his face. Worst of all, Hinami was sitting on his _lap._

Her frantic mind began to worry excessively.

Has Kaneki been making his moves on her? Did he manipulate Hinami's gullible nature? Is he deflowering her pure, innocent sister? Or worse yet, has he already done it? Because if he did... Her fists tightened.

She stormed over and yanked Hinami off him.

"Touka onee-chan? What's wrong?" Hinami squeaked, looking just as surprised as Kaneki.

He, however, still had the cheek to look completely innocent. He didn't even look embarrassed or anything. In fact, he looked absolutely confused.

"Uh... I'm teaching Hinami-chan."

She jabbed her finger at him and demanded, "Teaching what exactly? That you had to get close to her and... and..." She sputtered in rage. "And tainted her with your corrupted self!"

"I was teaching her about the human body, especially the skeletal and muscular systems," He said calmly.

"Lies!" She snapped and glared at him. How dare he still try to deny it?

"It's the truth. We weren't doing anything bad, I swear." Eyes wide, he lifted his hands in surrender.

"Don't think I'm a fool! You were doing some indecent things and you're lucky I haven't gouged out both of your eyes and make you eat them!"

Fearing the situation would spin out of control, Hinami decided to pipe up, "Onee-chan, it's the truth."

Touka blinked and turned around to face her. She gave the best supportive look she could muster. "Don't be afraid to tell me the truth. I'll protect you from horrible people." With that, she shot a disdainful glance at Kaneki, who still looked as blank and confused about the entire affair.

Hinami giggled and the suddenness of it shocked Touka, causing her to direct her gaze at Hinami.

"Don't worry. Onii-chan was teaching me about our facial muscles and how they are attached to our skull. He was showing me how our muscles work together to allow us to make different expressions."

And Touka felt like the whole world had crumbled away from her feet. It was a misunderstanding. A horribly embarrassing misunderstanding, where she mistook their physical closeness to be something more. Where all along, Hinami was just observing him. And now, thinking back...there really wasn't anything discriminating when she stormed into the room.

Blood rushed to her cheek, "Ah, Hinami. I apologise for this misunderstanding." She took a step back. And another. Both of them looked at her with identical looks of amusement.

Hinami replied. "It's alright," smiling back at Touka. Meanwhile, Kaneki being the intelligent person he is, realised something valuable from watching the exchange between Touka and Hinami. When he was trying to explain to Touka, she did not believe his words at all. But when it came to Hinami, Touka immediately believed her and looked extremely apologetic for her outburst.

By nature, Kaneki doesn't bear grudges but this chance was just too good to miss.

Touka caught the unholy gleam in his eyes and dread filled up her heart. Before she could stop him, the words were out.

"Touka-chan~ what did you think we were doing~?" Kaneki singsonged, looking far too smug, that bastard.

"Oh... Err, it was nothing." She answered lamely and mentally cringed at her pathetic reply.

"But you were looking almost half-mad with worry and anger. What did you think happened?" Hinami looked far too innocent, with her head tilted to one side and confusion surrounding her like a haze.

Touka frantically scanned the room, trying to come up with a decent excuse. While she was casting her eyes around for answers, Hinami shared a secret look of amusement with Kaneki.

_It's always fun to tease Touka onee-chan, isn't it?_ Her expression seems to communicate.

Kaneki, knowing that he had an ally on his side, grinned back.

"I thought… I could smell Rize in this room!" Touka blurted, and then paused. For a tense moment, expectant silence filled the room, where she repeatedly prodded her mind for further inspiration.

"And I thought that Rize took over Kaneki's body! And you were about to attack Hinami, so I stepped in. Yeah, of course I was scared for you. So there," Touka declared and folded her arm, apparently satisfied with her explanation.

But Hinami turned her head to Kaneki and asked, "Didn't she mention something about tainting me with your corrupted self?"

Touka froze.

A slow answering grin spread across his face and he looked at Touka with one eyebrow raised, "Yeah, what did you mean by that exactly?"

_Goddamnit, Kaneki. You and your big mouth._ She wasn't even bothering with subtlety now; she was stabbing her brain for answers, while squirming like a worm on a hook and fidgeting on the spot.

"Uh... I was shocked at that moment in time. And I may have been rather liberal in the words I used. Rest assured Hinami, I meant no disrespect to Kaneki." She sniffed and looked away resentfully, a picture of apologetic arrogance.

With amusement dancing in his eyes, Kaneki shot a questioning glance at her. _Think she has suffered enough?_

Hinami gave a small nod and said, "Oh, okay. I guess you just don't want anything bad to happen to us. Don't worry, onee-chan! I'm getting stronger!"

There was never any doubt about Hinami's abilities and with a fond smile, Touka replied, 'Of course."

The conversation then drifted off to Hinami telling her what Kaneki had taught her so far and Touka mentally thanked the heavens for avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation.

Sometimes, her temper and impulsiveness can really get the best of her.

_'__It's really cute,'_ Kaneki thought to himself and suddenly blushed at the thought. Hinami was talking about the different types of plants that exist and Touka just gave him a funny look, clearly questioning his sanity when his face flushed as red as a tomato and he wouldn't (couldn't) look at her.

* * *

It's like a horrible cliché story where a handsome gentleman appears and a cold, brash girl falls in love with him. (And please, she does _not_ think Kaneki is handsome in the slightest bit. She has high standards, ok? But of course, both you and I know better. It is, and always will be, Kaneki's kind and gentle nature that draws her to him, not that she'll ever admit it to herself. Contradictions, remember?)

* * *

The day started badly for her. She jolted awake from a nightmare involving Ayato and everyone she had ever known leaving her, while she cried and begged them to stay, but no one bothered to turn around. It's like they just couldn't care less. So it was with a sick churning of fear and grief that she awoke. Caught up in her dreams, she rolled over -

\- and fell off her bed.

"Ow..."

She wiped away the tears in her eyes, telling herself that the pain of the landing must have caused it. Her hands kept trembling.

Even as she splashed water onto her face, the memory of her dreams still lingered in her mind like a ghost, leaving mouldering fingerprints all over her day.

She was jittery, off balance and Yoriko noticed it, the moment she stepped into class, "What happened?"

She could tell her about her dream, about her fear of being left alone. But that would raise too many questions, like her brother, for it is he that had first planted the seeds of fear inside her. Even when she had nothing, she had Ayato. But he had left her; abandoned her on the sidewalk to bleed to death and even after all these years, it still _hurts._

If one of her closest family could just leave her, what about everyone else? She's scared that they would do the same. So she swallowed her words (help me), tore her eyes away from Yoriko, so she couldn't see the despair written in them and pretended that she was just suffering from a minor flu.

The day passed with agonising slowness and when the bell rang to signify the end of school, she rushed out without saying goodbye to Yoriko.

At Anteiku, the news reporter talked about a dangerous ghoul called Rabbit that had been attacking CCG investigators. The news cut to a figure in black wearing a rabbit mask, disappearing off into the moon, black kagune spreading out behind him like a monstrous wings of a bat. The news reporter appeared and finished off with, "This ghoul has been active around this neighbourhood for the past few weeks. Civilians are encouraged to stay at home at night for their safety."

Touka watched the news with a dead expression in her eyes, ignoring the hurt ripping at her heart and goes back to cleaning the plates.

Yomo tapped her shoulder and pointed his head to the back. She followed him quietly.

"It's him, isn't it?" Yomo asked, without preamble once he ensured that no one could overhear him.

She bit her lip and nodded.

"Has he contacted you so far?"

There's the crux, isn't it? The one simple thing that she hated (and desperately craved for). She shook her head numbly.

"I see. Would you like to take the day off?" Knowing what the girl must be going through, he conveyed his warmth and understanding through that sentence alone.

Touka completely took him by surprise when instead, she said, "If it's alright with you, I would like to work the closing shift please."

Since she was still looking down, he was unable to see her face. He asked again, not sure if he had heard right, "Are you sure? It's going to count as paid leave."

She nodded once and hurried out the door, surreptitiously wiping away any traitorous tears. She's not crying, dammit. Why would she care, that the moment Ayato showed up in the 20th ward, he didn't visit her at all? And, if he seemed to have the same rabbit mask as her, why would her heart feel like it has been ripped out and stomped on? That's just ridiculous. She had moved on. She's serious.

Pushing these thoughts away from her mind, she threw herself back into her work with vigour.

Yomo watched her flinging herself into work to try to avoid thinking about her brother and felt a pang of sympathy towards that girl.

A sad little rabbit makes everyone sad too.

Enji Koma, the Devil Ape, took one look at Touka's face and immediately decided that he himself was woefully unprepared for this. Yes, even the Devil Ape cannot solve this, for it is a matter of the heart, something to be treated with delicately and expertly. That, he does not know, but he thinks he knows someone who does...

It is the fourth time that Touka was wiping the whole place down when Kaneki appeared in her line of vision, looking far too sympathetic for his own good.

"Touka, you've cleaned that spot four times. You can stop now, you know."

She looked back at the sparkling walls, tables and chairs, pushed past him and growled. "Don't tell me what to do."

Kaneki, having received the call from Enji, had immediately come down to take over the night shift. Sure, he has an important exam tomorrow, but he figured that some things are worth failing for.

He had been watching her trying to lose herself in her work the entire time. Kaneki knew that she was beating herself up over the past, but it's not like it will change anything and she looked so miserable and angry at herself. He could practically see her crawling into her own head, shutting out the whole world and getting lost in her own misery-drenched thoughts.

"Uhh, I've mixed up the coffee powder from the different plantations. Could you help me?" He scratched his chin and gave a sheepish look.

He knew his plan succeeded when she rolled her eyes and snapped, "Next time, don't be too careless, dumbass."

They passed the time sorting out the beans, using their enhanced smell to differentiate the aroma. The task finished and she turned around to go, Kaneki walking behind her.

She had only taken a few steps, when Kaneki seemingly tripped on thin air and crashed into her. They go down in a tangle of limbs.

"Are you blind?" She seethed, rubbing her bruised arm, "Were you born with two left feet?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't see where I was going. Ouch... that hurts," he said, wincing at his own bruises on his legs.

"Are you saying I'm heavy?" She asked sharply. While Kaneki may have crashed into her from behind, he had manoeuvred himself so that Touka would land on _him_ instead of the other way. He figured that, if the other way really did occur, and he landed on Touka, she would rip off his arm and beat him to death with it.

"No, no. I didn't mean that," he soothed.

Sitting on his stomach, she glared at him before realising the... ahem, compromising position she was in. She stood up quickly.

"Hurry up, you clumsy oaf! We need to take care of the shop floor."

He got up and dusted himself off. "Don't worry; Yomo-san and Enji-san are still there."

They were walking back to the shop floor and he knew that the moment she stepped out there, she would be busy and wear herself out with work. He rapidly cast his eyes around and they alighted on a trolley, with clean plates, cups and utensils. Keyword, being clean.

_'__Not anymore,'_ he thought, and smiled to himself.

He walked past it and 'accidentally' overturned the whole trolley, causing the things to fall on the floor. Touka froze when she heard the noise and slowly turned around.

"Oh no, you didn't!" She hissed, "It took me a long time to wash each and every one of them!"

Flames of fury flared to life in her eyes and Kaneki wondered if he may have overdone it. He was just trying to take her mind off her brother, so he thought that anger was better than sorrow, right?

He gulped. "I'm sorry...?"

"BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING HOME, YOU BETTER FINISH WASHING THE ENTIRE GODDAMN THING!" She roared at him.

She was furious; she had spent a long time cleaning that and he bumbled around and upended the entire thing? Argh, what a dumbass!

Yomo appeared from nowhere and said. "Since you are in charge of him, you would have to share the same punishment. Both of you have to clean up the mess." The steely gaze in his eyes brooked no argument from the youngsters. Touka lowered her head and muttered, "Yes, sir."

Unknown to her, Yomo mouthed to Kaneki, _'You're doing well_.' Kaneki gave a small nod in acknowledgment and bent down to pick up the fallen cutlery.

Luckily, none of the things were broken because Kaneki is a smart kid; he bumped into the cart so all the things dropped onto the carpeted floor. All the noise was just the cutlery clinking together. Touka walked into the kitchen to start washing up and Enji walked past the hallway, giving Kaneki two thumbs up behind her back.

Kaneki could see that she was fuming mad, but he couldn't help but feel proud. Touka looked like her old self again and everyone at Anteiku seemed pretty supportive of his (somewhat unorthodox) methods.

Meanwhile, Touka was mentally calling him ten different kinds of idiot, but she really didn't have the time or the energy to lash out at him. She had to wash all these plates again, _dammit._ Instead, she settled with a plate thrown at his head and a tongue lashing of his general incompetence. (And even that doesn't quite satisfy her because the plate broke against his ghoul skin. So she just shouted insulting names at him like 'wood louse', 'midget' and 'four eyes'. It wasn't really insulting, but she's pissed; she just needed to vent it out rather than personally strangle him to death.)

That night, she scrubbed the dishes viciously and slammed them down on the counter to dry, as if daring anyone to approach her, but Kaneki smiled; he didn't say a word, merely walked over to her side and kept her company by drying the utensils amidst the noise and clatter.

There was a time where she would have chased everyone out of the room in a violent screaming frenzy when the dark mood struck her. But now, now she seethed and threw the plates into the sink, she slammed the cupboard doors and stomped around the kitchen, and in the midst of it all is Kaneki, looking completely at ease with all of this - peaceful, even.

She didn't say it, but his presence calmed her down; he anchored her to the present and made the past a little less dark and a little more bearable.

A flicker of flame licked Touka's ice-encrusted heart and bit by bit, the lock started to melt.

Yoshimura stood at the doorway, looking in on the two youngsters with affection in his gaze.

At the corner, the old man smiled to himself. _Ah, young love…_

_All the more sweeter when they don't know even know it._

Unaware of Yoshimura's musing, Touka shot another resentful glare at Kaneki.

A plate shatters against the counter.

* * *

This is the story of both fire and ice that lie inside a girl. It may mean one thing, but it may actually mean another because it is a contradiction in itself.

There is still ice in her heart, but the more time she spends with the boy, the ice melts a little more and the flames burns a little higher, a little brighter.

* * *

**A/N2: Thank you all for your kind encouragement and support! :) You guys are amazing!**

**Updates for this might not be as fast as usual because I'm currently writing a whole series involving Touka and Kaneki (ie. A new story). There will be an exciting plot. There will be action, adventure and an extremely unsafe amount of angst. There will also be romance involving Touken! So while I'm writing that, these oneshots would have to wait a little while. Updates for this would be around say, 2-3 weeks instead of every week. Please be a little patient with me before I return to How to Love a Broken Thing. **

**I can't wait to upload the new series but I want it to be good, amazing and spectacular. You deserve this level of quality. (Sorry, that was just my arrogance speaking. Please ignore that. I just hope that the new series I'm writing ****_doesn't suck_****, that's all. :D ) **

**Thanks once again!**


	4. Those that walk by your side

**Hello everyone! Wow, it's been a long time since I last updated and for that, I can only aplologise for the long wait as I was busy rewriting some parts. Thank you for bearing with me :)**

**Many thanks to my betas SirGregSloth and xxxDreamingflowerxxx. SirGregSloth, you are indeed a true sir. Your help in crafting the fic and fruitful discussions are always appreciated. Thanks for giving me your opinion on how to improve. *tips hat and clinks tea cups* XD **

**For all the daily hilarious conversations and writing advice, thank you xxxDreamingflowerxxx. (I seriously think you are a speed demon *coughs* I mean a really motivated writer.) High five!**

**Any remaining mistakes are mine.**

* * *

Turning into a half-ghoul has thrown his life in disarray. Before, his life was mundane and organized. He woke up, he went to university, then he returned home to finish up the homework and proceeded to sleep. Rinse, dry, repeat.

It was dull and maybe a little lonely.

If he was being honest about it, then it was very lonely.

Hide is a good friend, but he has his own buddies too and he only shares two classes with him. It's not a lot. That's why Kaneki likes to read books; it takes away the edge of loneliness, the bone deep sadness of never being noticed, never being wanted.

But right now, with the people he has met on his journey as a half-ghoul, he can say that he has met some great people he considers as friends. Well, most of them. It's really hard to read Yomo's mood and Nishiki keeps insulting him, Touka has violent mood swings and Yoshimura looks peaceful most of the time, although Tsukiyama kinda creeps him out a bit, Hinami is probably the sanest around, Enji likes to tease him a lot and Irimi just smiles mysteriously whenever she sees him while Uta fixates on him with intense stares which makes him uncomfortable and he gets the feeling that Itori is hiding something from him despite her cheerful demeanour and –

Okay, he's rambling.

The thing is, he really likes them and he hopes they feel the same way too. They're a bunch of really colourful people and something in him feels lighter whenever he's with them.

As if the burden of loneliness has loosened up.

* * *

Working at Anteiku gives Kaneki plenty of chance to bear the brunt of Touka's rants, ahem, I mean, work together with her.

At 5pm in the evening on a particular busy day, he's stuck in the kitchen, washing the ever increasing piles of cutlery and coffee cups while the others are out at the shop front frantically taking down orders and preparing them. The back kitchen – where he is at – is filled with the sound of running water and the soft swish of the cloth as he washes the cups amidst the distant hustle and bustle.

Touka would be bringing him another trolley of dirty plates so he figures that he's probably going to be stuck here doing this. He'd better clean them properly till they "shine like a bald guy's head under the spotlight," before the girl would come around later. Touka's words, not his. And she had given him that look, the one that said he'd better accomplish it if he wants to live to see another day.

If anyone asks Kaneki, why he doesn't retaliate after another angry outburst from Touka, it's because he can tell that she has been through a lot and he knows that he looks weak in her eyes. And he is, sorta. When he was completely human, the terror of ghouls was like a small black patch in his mind, a distant nightmare. Sure, ghouls killed people, but it wasn't happening to him or anyone close to him. It was like a nuclear bomb – it may sound scary, but the likelihood of that occurring was pretty slim. As such, he didn't pay much heed to it.

He was ignorant of the horrors of the ghoul world for most of his life and his transformation to a half ghoul was a painful experience and it still is.

There are things that he doesn't know, not yet, maybe never, and he can see the haunted light in Touka's eyes. The one that spoke volumes about the things that she had seen and the things she had done for the sake of survival when she was just a small child, forced to kill in order to protect her family. It stays with you, that kind of trauma, the knowledge that life can be extinguished as easily as breathing. Compared to hers, his life experience is nothing.

So, maybe he thinks that Touka can be pretty unreasonable at times and a bit violent (oh, who's he kidding? She has anger management problems the size of the _Jupiter_) but at heart, he can tell she's a good person. As grumpy as a bear, but she means well by pushing others to their absolute limits.

"Kaneki, the fuck are you standing there for? Get back to work, you lazy piece of shit!" Touka shouts as she pushes in a trolley full of dirty utensils.

Scratch that, she's scary as hell!

"Yes, ma'am!"

* * *

As she dumps another stack of dirty plates into the trolley, the whole stack wobbles dangerously before coming to a deceptive stillness. It's getting full and unless she can distort the laws of physics to accommodate more plates, she should stop stacking them and pass them over to Kaneki for him to wash.

A quick glance at the hordes of customers makes her hesitate. She should be serving them, not bringing this over to the kitchen. With the additional _porcelain_ plates, the total time needed to make the two-way trip is going to take 3 minutes and 19 seconds and judging from the look of impatience on the customers' faces, 3 minutes and 19 seconds is a long time for them.

Yomo must have some super ninja skills or something, because he suddenly appears to her right and tells her in a low voice, "Take a 15 minutes breather. I'll cover you."

With a grateful look, she nods her thanks and begins to push the trolley to the back. She's beginning to seriously wonder why they are using porcelain cutlery of all things. Not only are they unwieldy and breakable, they fucking weigh a ton. It feels like she's pushing an elephant.

After she dumps this over to Kaneki, she swears she is going to get a warm cup of coffee and relax.

Oh wait, she still has to inspect the quality of Kaneki's washing. Ugh. There's no rest for the weary or some shit like that.

If anyone asks Touka why she is being especially hard on Kaneki, well, who wouldn't? Look at him! He has spent most of his life as a human and he was suddenly thrust into her world. That bright, vulnerable look in his eyes has barely worn off; he's like a small deer tottering on unsteady legs into the caves of dragons.

It's infuriating and pissing her off for no reason whatsoever.

(It reminds her of herself...

The her from a long, long time ago.)

Argh, now isn't the time to think back on the past, now is the time to focus on a black-haired male with clear brown eyes and a gentle smile...

He can fear her, he can hate her, he can curse her name for the rest of his life but she will make him stronger. She will sharpen his edge and strengthen his mettle if that means he can stop getting hurt like the damn trouble magnet he is. Him and his lofty ideals of a world where ghouls and human can coexist peacefully.

Some people are just too damn caring for their own good. (A part of her is cackling madly, _Pot calling the kettle black, much?_ She locks it in a cage and throws it into the lake of burning lava.)

In any case, she'll do whatever it takes to protect him by making him stronger.

With that in mind, she nods to herself and steps into the kitchen –

– Only to see that damn idiot, just staring off into space when he's supposed to be working!

"Kaneki, the fuck are you standing there for?! Get back to work, you lazy piece of shit!"

* * *

"Oh man, you were getting abused by her." Enji comments as Kaneki walks back to the counter after Touka has verbally assaulted his incompetence in doing the very basic of basic things called cleaning. While Enji is a carefree and easy going person, even he felt that Touka was really overdoing it when it came to Kaneki. He's never seen her so hard on anyone before.

Kaneki gives a sheepish smile. "I deserved it anyway. I did miss a spot."

"Yeah, but it was just one. Heck, when I clean, I miss more than one area and even she's not as harsh on me as she is to you. Did you insult her in your last life or something?"

"I'm sure I didn't. Maybe she just wants me to improve faster?" He scratches his head, and continues, "I guess she has high expectations."

"You're not even slightly angry?"

"Nope, why should I? I should have been more careful. Besides," and in a rare show of gesture, Kaneki winks, "I kinda get the feeling she's looking out for me."

At that, Enji throws back his head and laughs.

"You know, I've just realised something. The only person I know that she is this harsh on–"

"–Is Nishiki," Kaneki cuts in. They let the mental image of those two screaming at the top of their lungs at each other sink in, before bursting out in peals of laughter.

When it subsides, Enji wipes a tear and says, "Nah, that person is herself."

Kaneki considers this. It makes sense. Even Uta had mentioned she was a hard worker, pushing herself till the breaking point to complete a task. And the same level of stubbornness and raging anger was unleashed on him, as if she was goading him to be better, to rise above her scolding and prove to her that he's strong.

Huh, it suddenly makes god awful sense now.

"You're right," he says.

Grinning, Enji says, "That's right, I'm right! Now help me bring these crates up to the storeroom."

"I knew there was a reason why you talked to me."

"Well it's sure not because of your looks."

"Then it's because of my rippling muscular physique?"

"Absolutely, it's definitely that half-starved stick-thin physique you've got there."

With a chuckle, Kaneki lifts the boxes and heads to the storeroom, Enji grinning beside him.

* * *

In Kamii University, there lies a spider. Who spins its webs day in, day out, weaving the nest where it resides in the middle, a bloated creature watching the inhabitants with its beady eyes. It creeps up a wall on long spindly legs which are the colour of obsidian, fangs out and quivering in anticipation.

"Argh, what the shit?! Stupid spider!" Nishiki's chair falls with a clatter on the floor, surprise and anger – fear, actually – warring on his face as he crouches behind his desk. He eyes the offending spider warily.

It's a little known fact, but Nishiki is afraid of them.

Yes, he's a flesh-eating ghoul and can kill anyone within 5 seconds flat, but show him a spider and he's going to nope the fuck out of here. It's complicated.

Still, he's going to prove why ghouls are at the top of the food chain. He's going to crush that monster (hopefully. Maybe. Some day.)

He rolls up a piece of newspaper and shakily stands up, inching closer and closer and –

The spider twitches.

"Urgh!" A strangled gasp passes through his lips and he's at his door, the point furthest away from it. If he was a cat, his fur would be standing on end like a giant fur ball and hissing his hatred for that vermin. As it is, he's a ghoul and far more dignified in his display of fear.

He shuts the door and runs.

Too caught up in trying to increase the distance between that _thing_ and him, he doesn't notice his surroundings and in retrospect, that was really careless of him.

He crashes into someone who lets out a surprised _oof!_

"Watch where you're going," he blusters, not even pausing in his tracks to look at the person.

"Nishio-sempai?"

Oh. It's that one-eyed brat.

He stops and turns around to face him, "What do you want, shithead?"

Kaneki, in a simple white shirt and brown pants is carrying a bag on his shoulders, which he adjusts as the strap had fallen off in the encounter. He asks quizzically, "Are you alright? You look pale."

"Tch, I'm fine." He looks away in haughty disdain. What an unlucky coincidence to see him. He just wants to find Kimi, not this dumb-looking brat whom he can snap like a twig if he wants to. For a half-ghoul, he looks so scrawny and worthless – just like horse crap.

It's funny how mentally insulting someone can make you feel better. Arrogance, that Nishiki can do. It's familiar ground, after all.

"Oh Nishiki, I came to tell you that Hide asked if you could pass him the logistics for our school's cultural festival."

Nishiki knows that the logistics are in the third shelf at the window, saved on a thumb drive which he uses for school matters. But that meant going into his room. With _it._

He's beginning to think his tactical retreat may not be such a good idea after all. When he returns to his room, he would have no idea where it could have gone. It could be prowling around his bed, lurking in his shoes, creeping up the side of his neck, argh! Anything!

But wait… he casts a sly look at Kaneki.

"Are you afraid of spiders?"

Confused at the sudden change of topic, Kaneki blinks, then replies, "No, why?"

Just perfect.

"In exchange for the logistics, I require you to perform an exorcism in my room. What say you?"

"Um, sure. But what has exorcism and demons got to do with spiders?"

Nishiki waves his hands dismissively. "What's the difference?"

* * *

After a whole 30 minutes of Kaneki trying to catch the spider and Nishiki 'helping' him out by standing at the door and insulting both the spider and the half-ghoul's pathetic attempts to locate the darn thing, the spider was eventually caught in a cup where it was released on the first level of the school building furthest away from Nishiki's dormitory.

As they walk back towards his room to collect the thumb drive, Kaneki thinks it's time to stop ignoring the obvious.

"So you're afraid of spiders…"

"I'm not afraid. I just don't like to see one. Or touch them." He shudders briefly, imagining the coarse hair of spindly-leg brushing against his arm.

"And you better not tell anyone about this or I'll tell Touka that you were the one who spilled coffee on her rabbit jacket."

Kaneki freezes.

A few weeks ago, he had accidentally upturned a cup of the steaming black liquid on the table and in his haste to clear the spill; he grabbed at whatever cloth he found in the cleaning closet and used it to wipe the mess. The closet didn't have any lights on, so it was pitch-black and his fumbling fingers had come into contact with something soft and cottony.

He didn't think.

He rushed out and mopped up the mess and it was only after it was over did he look at the 'cloth' with growing horror. Touka had left her jacket in the closet when she came for her shift and he had used it! The large black stain grew larger and he'd immediately dumped it in the sink, trying to wash the stain off to no avail. And then Touka came clomping down the stairs with a murderous expression on her face because he had given the wrong order to a customer. So he'd endured another bout of her rants and by the end of it, he thought it would be best if he didn't tell her about her jacket. A guy can only take a full blown tirade up to a certain point before he's feeling washed out and sick with nausea. And that was that.

Somehow, Nishiki had found out about this incident and his inner voice screams _BLACKMAIL_ to him. Still, Kaneki doesn't want to be a victim of her rage again (he's not a masochist, thank you very much, and he possesses a level of self-preservation. It's telling him that the rabbit jacket is practically _sacred_ in the eyes of Touka. She went ballistic when she found out the state of her jacket, but since no one – him excluded – knew what happened, she was left fuming and seethed at everyone in general. If he wants his internal organs to remain in his body, either he explains to her what happened while she is in a forgiving mood – unlikely – or he stays silent forever. No prizes for guessing which path he took.)

Keeping Nishiki's arachnophobia seems like the lesser of two evils.

"Ah… that's okay."

Nishiki smirks, "Thought you'd say that."

Feeling immensely charitable, he adds, "You know, Touka has changed ever since you arrived. The first time I met her, the look in her eyes could freeze hell twice over. But now, she's more open, more talkative and she gets pissed more often. I think it's because you're a shithead. If there's one thing I know about her, it's that she can't stand idiots, as she tends to rage whenever she meets one." He gives him a sly look, pleased at the insinuations of Kaneki's perceived ineptness.

Ignoring the insults (he's getting really good at this), Kaneki asks, "What was she like before she met me?"

"Hmm…" Nishiki puts a hand to his chin, "She didn't talk much and she was really cold. She'd beat up anyone who even looked at her wrong and she was like a lone wolf, angry, feral and dangerous." He looks at Kaneki, and adds, "She must really dislike you."

Kaneki merely nods. That confirms his suspicion that Touka didn't have a normal childhood. Not by a long shot. How many times has she been broken until she remains too scared to let others in?

"I don't think so. I mean, if you look closer, there are a lot of things left unsaid between the lines. She's full of contradictions."

"Oh yeah?" Nishiki raises an eyebrow, "For example?"

"Well… Touka calls me a moron every day but she stays with me while I clean up the store after everyone has gone back home. She's extremely aggressive during our combat lessons, but she always patches me up when a few of my more severe injuries can't heal properly. No matter how busy she is, she always checks on me a few times a day during my work shift to make sure I'm managing fine, although she just takes the time to insult me. And once, I didn't eat for a few days and she just gave me a cup of coffee with the blood cubes inside, claiming there were some extra coffee beans lying about that she didn't want to go to waste. But I saw her take them from the newest batch of our delivery. So I don't really agree with what you think of her."

It's the longest conversation Nishiki has ever heard from Kaneki. Most of the time, he would mumble his way through, but the way he had said it, with so much certainty and confidence in his words, well, that was a first for him.

"Oh, is that so? She sounds like a completely different person. And you remembered all this?"

Kaneki must have realised it himself when he suddenly catches himself and blushes.

"Just something I've noticed."

Nishiki snorts, "Whatever. For all that dumb look on your face, you pick up on a lot of things."

It was a backhanded compliment, but Kaneki takes what he can get. "Uh…thanks?"

"And keep your mouth shut about today or I'll kill you."

That's more like the Nishiki he knows. "Ok."

As he walks back towards the school building with a thumb drive in hand, after Nishiki has unceremoniously made him wait outside his room, Kaneki reflects on the conversation. It wasn't that he stalks Touka or anything, he simply _observes._

It's funny, but he thinks Touka shows the most amounts of emotions to him – whether be it annoyance, anger, worry or contentment. _Protective_, is what a voice in his heart says, and he can't agree more.

He knows that Touka guards her heart and soul like a dragon does for its hoard, so every little glimpse she allows, however small that may be, feels like the silver moon rising over the sea.

* * *

"Touka, I made this for you!" Yoriko beams and takes out a bento box from her bag and shoves it into her face.

"Oh, er… you shouldn't have." This close to her face, Touka can smell the noxious fumes of human food polluting the air. Ugh, how can humans eat this stuff?

"That's alright; I made it especially for you." She makes another motion with the bento box and Touka reluctantly takes it and places it on her lap.

"Thank you." She looks at the dubious present with a mixture of determination and resignation, mentally calculating how long it would take to expel the whole mass of food that sits waiting like a poisonous scorpion behind the cheerful looking Hello Kitty box.

"Aren't you going to eat it?" Yoriko asks, looking slightly crestfallen at the less-than-warm reception she received. She had thought it was a good idea, seeing as how little Touka ate.

"Oh," Touka looks up, "I'm really grateful you made this for me, but I'm not really hungry now. I'll finish this after class alright?"

"Promise?" The amount of hope and trust in her eyes is unbelievable.

She can hardly believe it herself when she finds herself saying, "Promise. I'll even eat it in front of you."

In retrospect, that was a stupid, _stupid_ thing to agree to.

* * *

Her stomach turns uneasily as nausea grips a hold of her, warm liquid spilling out from her lips as she bends over the toilet bowl.

She had made good on her promise, and Yoriko looked extremely satisfied, as if the sole purpose of her life was to feed her as much as possible. After shovelling the food into her mouth as fast as she could so she didn't have to taste any of it, she had told her to go home first as she needed to collect something from a teacher. In actual fact, she locked herself up in the bathroom, puking her guts out and feeling dizzy from the exertion. How long has she been gagging here anyway? The food wasn't even that much, but her stomach clenches in agony as she unleashes another string of vomit.

God, she hates her life right now.

But it is with grim satisfaction that she had done it. Yoriko didn't make the food for nothing.

Later, with shaky legs and her mind a black chasm of exhaustion, she takes the train home. Her day just got from bad to worse when she sees a familiar person sitting opposite her.

"Hello Touka-chan," Kaneki greets warmly, when he catches sight of her stumbling into the train.

"Shut up," she growls and collapses on the seat with relief. Sweat beads her forehead and her hair hangs lanky and thin from her head. Her complexion is pale, her breathing shallow and the usual heat in her words seems muted, as if her fire is dampened.

Kaneki saw all that and more, and being the caring person he is, asks, "What happened?"

Defensiveness tightens her shoulders and she crosses her arms. She really wants some peace and quiet on the train, but she refuses to look weak and vulnerable to him. Anyone but that idiot!

"Yoriko," she says it like a challenge, a wounded animal driven by pain and fear.

"Ah…" he says, nodding to himself. It made sense. He has heard of her friend and it reminds him of Hide. A human friend who unknowingly cares about a ghoul. As dangerous as it seems, the ghoul just can't extricate himself/herself from the warm smiles and gentle companionship. It seems she even ate the food Yoriko had prepared for her despite the havoc it caused to a ghoul's body.

There's something really amusing about it.

"What are you smiling at, shithead?" She's bristling and she has no idea what he's thinking, but she will not allow herself to be mocked in any way.

"Nothing."

The knowing smile on his face annoys her. There's understanding and fondness in his gaze and she has no bloody idea why would _anyone_ give her that look. Faced with indecision, she just glares at him.

"Mind your own – hurgh!"

She must have pushed herself from the long walk to the train station, because her stomach is twisting on itself and the urge to throw up presses hard against her throat like a steel blade. She puts her hand in front of her mouth, trying to push down the reflex to gag. _Not now! _She frantically thinks. _I'm on the train._

"Are you okay?" He stands up and walks towards her, looking at her with concern as his hands ghost over her arms.

She glares. The meaning is clear: _What do you think, idiot?_

Her throat shutters open traitorously for a moment, but it is enough for some bile to flow into her mouth. It is with some difficulty that she swallows it back, grimacing in disgust at the acid hot taste.

"Nausea, am I correct? Also light-headedness and stomach uneasiness." Kaneki rattles off and when Touka nods grudgingly in confirmation, he walks back to his bag and takes out something. It's a small bottle; slightly smaller than her pinkie finger.

She leans away when he brings it to her.

"Go away, Kaneki! I don't need your fucking help!" she snarls at him ferociously. She's fine! She can do this on her own! Nausea rises like a tsunami wave and she pushes it down with all the willpower she can muster.

His hand falls to his side as he stands there, looking at her like a lost child.

Her stomach gurgles menacingly and she clamps her throat shut, gritting her teeth and wishing she was anywhere but here.

Shutting her eyes, she inhales through her nose – and catches a whiff of a delicately sweet and refreshing scent.

It quells the nausea almost immediately.

She opens her eyes. The vial is open and he is holding it in front of her face.

"What's that?" She asks and looks at it with suspicion. She takes another cautious sniff and confirms that the scent comes from the small bottle that is currently nestling in his palm.

"Tiger lily. I quite like its scent."

He gives a hesitant smile.

She looks at the small bottle again.

"It stopped the nausea." Soft surprise underlines her words as she wraps her fingers around the cool glass.

"It… It helps me when I'm not feeling well. I thought it might help with what you're experiencing." He finishes the last sentence in a rush and places it into her hands, the brief contact sending a trail of warmth up her spine.

"Keep it." He says, and steps back.

A gift. She cradles the small bottle, bringing it closer to her face and inhaling the delicate scent.

"… Thanks."

"You're welcome, I hope you're feeling better." He walks back to his seat and watches her with soft brown eyes.

"Yeah… I do."

She takes another deep breath of the calming smell, a soothing balm that washes away the spiky green sickness she had felt earlier and gives a slight smile. She's really feeling better.

Looking up, she catches a gentle smile on his face and she has to immediately look away. Her chest feels a little too warm for her comfort.

Still, she grips the small vial tighter and brings it closer to her heart.

The train ride passes in companionable silence, each staring out of the windows at the scenery. If their eyes catch each other in the reflection a few times, yeah well, trees become fucking boring after a while.

* * *

**This is more of an experimental piece than anything since I wanted to show things from Kaneki's perspective. There's less of a contemplative mood for this plus I brought in Enji (the snark buddy you always wanted) and Nishiki (the closet scaredy-cat). What do you all think about this chapter? Did you like that there were more characters or should I just focus more on Touka then? You tell me. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts so I know how I should approach the next chapter. Many thanks!**

**Oh yea, remember the new Touken series I mentioned? The one that is (hopefully) spectacular, (possibly) awesome and (probably) nice? It's out and it's called _'The Centipede's Sting'._ You can check it out if you like and maybe it's your cup of tea - which would be great - and maybe it's not - well, that's cool too. ^^**

**Cheers friends!**


	5. On wings of dawn

**So I'm currently up to my eyeballs with some projects and I'm afraid I don't really have a lot of time to write now. Which is ironic, considering that I've been feeling particularly inspired of late so I can't wait to see what form in which my creative juices take. (I'm actually hoping for a laser-shooting dragon that can breathe twin jets of fire and electricity but eh, that's just me.) XD Still, be it writing on the train or during break time, I'll do my best.**

**Thanks to my betas SirGregSloth and xxxDreamingflowerxxx. Without them, this chapter would really be horrendous. If I could, I would send you a whole truckload of (insert favourite food here). :D**

**And of course, to those people who supported this fic with favourites/follows or dropping a friendly and awesome review/PM. Because really, this whole series wouldn't exist without the awesome people in this fandom.**

* * *

It's not well-known to many, but Touka likes to make lists.

To name a few, she has a shopping list, a to-do list, a bucket list and a 'Things that I would never ever do in my life' list.

The reason why she likes them is that the systematic approaches are simple and easy to understand. There are no confusing jumbles of sentences, neither are there overtly complicated phrases and double meanings, ambiguous words and convoluted expressions that serve to drag readers into a tangled briar of incomprehension (Hello Classical Literature).

So lists, manuals and step-by-step scripts are something which she is inherently grateful for. In a more than overly complicated world, being a ghoul itself is not only a fucking hard thing to do, she can't just survive in this world, she needs to thrive in it too. And she's doing fine, really, thanks for asking. Her rampaging days - while spectacularly bloody -makes her internally wince in embarrassment whenever someone makes a mention of it. Externally, however, it's a different matter entirely.

"Enji Koma, you fat monkey bastard! I said not to bring that incident up!"

"Calm down, Touka-chan!" The person in question ducks as a ceramic plate speeds towards his face and it's only his ghoul reflexes that save him just in time. The same can't be said for the plate itself, which shatters against the countertop. Yoshimura, alerted by the loud noises, steps out from the kitchen to give a disapproving glare to the hot tempered girl who promptly bows her head in apology.

Other than a few occasional mishaps here and there, she's perfectly contented with the life she has at Anteiku. In case it wasn't made clear, the introduction of Kaneki was not considered a minor disturbance in her life. It's a huge giant ball of irritation that eclipses her normal routine with an apologetic smile and kind eyes.

Still, she adapts and moves on; a small place in her heart grudgingly shifts to encompass him, bringing him into her social sphere. She now has to deal with a defenceless half-ghoul and impart her wisdom (_pfff, yea right, cause you are literally overflowing with it,_ her inner voice comments) to him and it feels like she's teaching a baby how to walk. What a pain.

And then…

The demon appeared.

Beady eyes that hold swirling malice within them, clawed talons that wrapped around its perch so tightly she thinks she can almost hear it creak and it's glaring down at her like she's some dirt on the floor. It emits a fetid stench, probably because it spent so much time with decomposing corpses. Also, it has a colourful plumage that undoubtedly has poisonous secretions and one touch is enough for a grown man to convulse in death throes. To top off its menacing appearance, it has a sharp curved beak that glints like a razor blade under the Sun, speaking of untold number of times where it had ripped open flesh and devoured the glistening entrails of its prey.

The creature is looking right at her now and it cocks its head and says, "_Tweet._"

* * *

Now what does she do when confronted with her sworn enemy, her hated foe, her blood sworn nemesis?

Ranging from secretly plotting its demise and actively trying to kill it outright (although the latter was her preferred option, she remembers the look of joy on Hinami's face when she looks at that damn thing and Touka couldn't bear to take it away. That damn thing better be grateful that it has Hinami on its side), she tries her best to coexist with it. As much as she possibly can, but the limits do get blurred from time to time. Her tolerance level increases whenever she has a calming presence by her side (ie. Hinami) or whenever she has something to prove to someone _("Kaneki, I am not afraid of that stupid thing and wipe that smile off your face, you shithead.")_ On those days, she cannot-quite accept its presence.

But on others, it becomes a full-fledged _war_.

"_Stupid bird, return to your cage right away, you fucking piece of flying shit!"_

Vulgarities and excessive violence aside, ignoring six broken chairs, two tables cracked in half, a shattered mirror caused by a flying fist, three overturned vases that shattered on the floor and one irate girl, other than all these, yeah, things were just…fine.

Although Yoshimura was not amused and made her repair the broken furniture. The mirror couldn't be saved so she had to use her own money to pay for a new one.

Also, that incident only goes to show that Kaneki has zero-level of self-preservation with regards to Touka when he takes one look at the damaged room, notes Hetare perching smugly in its cage with the cage door hanging loose, and sees the wild look on Touka's face that he chuckles lightly. To make matters worse, Enji pops in to see what the ruckus was about, a full three second passed where he takes in the scene, and then he cracks up, head thrown back and body shaking with laughter.

What a bunch of assholes.

She made sure she got her revenge by replacing the special blood-sugar cubes with salt when they were making their own coffee. Ghouls can't taste salt exactly, but they can feel a stinging sensation on their tongue when they add a pinch of it. Now multiply it by five _spoonfuls_ and you'll get an idea on why Enji literally spat out his coffee at his unfortunate co-worker who was on duty on that day and who happened to be at the wrong (right) place and wrong (right) time.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Yoshimura only needs to raise one unimpressed eyebrow on the coffee stains on the half-ghoul's uniform and gave Enji a considering stare before sending them away to get changed. She thought she could get away with it, but for that old guy, he could be surprisingly perceptive about things. She got punished with kitchen cleanup duty for _weeks_.

She blamed that demon, sure that it's grinning to itself in some dark corner of the room at her misfortune.

This is but just a few of the lively incidents that plagued Anteiku, fondly dubbed as 'Touka's flying frenzy' but never to her face.

* * *

To deal with the monster lurking at Anteiku, Touka mentally compiles a list (surprise surprise). It's actually a manual on how to survive when trapped with a terrible entity, forced to interact with its vile presence and on certain occasions, touch its disgusting outer covering. In short, it's a survival horror list. Occasionally, she even makes mental notes to herself.

This is how it goes:

_The beast must be fed daily, hinting of its inherent gluttony and insatiable hunger when it is denied its usual diet of human flesh. It is a wild beast, hence it shall take some time before it adjusts to a new feeding regime, but whatever the case is, we must never let it taste mortal flesh._

_Step 1: Determine the type of food that the beast eats._

She's not entirely sure. Worms? Fruits? Seeds? Birds are carnivorous, omnivorous or herbivorous and she really can't tell what the vermin is. It was her father, who deduced correctly what kind of food types that her childhood bird could eat, but her father isn't here and she has nothing to work with.

_Step 2: Bring the food to it and approach - _

Wait, wait, wait! What kind of food is it first? She has to decide. A quick check with Yoshimura, Yomo, Enji and Irimi merely tells her that they, too, have absolutely no idea. So she decides to consult Google instead and types in the distinguishing features of the beast. 'Sinister eyes,' 'murderous aura,' and 'damnable beast' gives her a variety of spiders, werewolves and tax collectors.

Clearly, this isn't helping.

God damnit, manual. Can't you give me anything else that's more useful other than instructions?

The spike of anger must have caused something in her head to rattle loose because a voice retorts back, _Oh please! I'm just a subconscious manifestation of your determination to confront that bird. I'm literally just a voice in your head, meant to disguise your apparent phobia towards them. What do you expect me to do? Make an apple tap-dance?_ It sniffs, and fades away into peeved silence.

Touka finds that her inner voice sure can be a little snippy. Arrogant, too. Unnecessarily sarcastic and –

\- _Do you want my help or not?_ It snaps suddenly.

_Of course! _She retorts back, _But if you're going to show so much attitude, I would rather figure this out on my own!_

There, a taste of its (her?) own medicine.

_Hmph. Fine…_

Yep, she's keeping her mental state organized one sassy remark at a time. Anyway. She has to get back to her task at hand.

Whether it is a simple bit of dumb luck or someone in heaven decided to take pity on her, the doorbell rings and a familiar figure steps into Anteiku, an eye-patch over one of his eyes.

Both her inner voice and her have the exact thought: _Ask him._

Apparently, as Kaneki explained patiently, the vermin in the cage eats seeds, as can be seen in the moderate beak size which is suitable to crack open tiny seeds to peck on them. So yeah, seeds.

_Step 2: Bring the food to it and approach the cage slowly. Make no sudden moves and walk in small steps towards it._

As she progresses slowly and painfully towards the lair of the beast, one of her hands is clutching tightly to the bag of seeds. The fiend has caught sight of her approach and in a sudden snap, it unfurls its wings. They are brightly coloured (all the more to lure one into a trap with), and the quick motion causes Touka to jerk back, heart hammering in her chest. It pulls its wings closer to itself, seemingly pleased by her reaction. Irrationally, Touka gets the feeling that it doesn't really need to eat the seeds.

It feeds on fear instead. More specifically, _her_ fear.

But she's not going to let it win. She inhales a deep breath, grips the bag tighter to her chest and strides forward to meet it headlong.

_Step 3: When refilling the food container, it is best not to show any fear. Your mind should be a blank void, only concerned with your actions and not what lies in wait._

Grabbing a fistful of seed, she dumps it into the food container and steps back to watch it warily.

It hops down from the swing, bobs its head towards the food and pecks, once, twice. Her muscles are relaxing, seeing how normal it behaves, just like the pigeons and sparrows that fly around Japan. Nothing unusual about that. Just a normal annoyance. She's clinging to that illusion with a mix of desperation and hope. The alternative is to admit that she had willingly and foolishly let herself get this close to the demon under the guise of feeding it. It could just take a huge bite out of her head now.

The fiend, seemingly able to pick up on the thoughts of its enemies, straightens up to look at her dead in the eye.

Silence stretches on, her heart suddenly stuck in her throat. The beak opens wider and wider, to reveal a bottomless abyss. It shuffles around until it is directly in front of her, a sound issuing from within its yawning dark maw, "Squawk!"

_Step 4: Run._

She bolts.

* * *

_It has been ten days since I last visited the critter and within that time period, the cage stinks. The other workers have been diligent in feeding it but it was Hinami who mentioned that the cage needed to be cleaned. Since she trusted no one else to do a good job of it, the task naturally fell to me. This may well be my very last words._

_Step 1: Contain the beast in a locked room with grilles on the windows and fans switched off. Someone should stay in the room to prevent its escape while another person would be the one doing the actual cleaning._

"Kaneki, are you free?" She gruffly asks.

"Uh," he looks at the mountain of dishes he has yet to wash and looks back at the stormy expression in her gaze, "Yes?"

She nods and gestures for him to follow her. Climbing up the staircase, Kaneki can't help but wonder what she needs him for. Is it to clean up a dead body? Or what if he is to be a murder accomplice judging from that grim look in her eyes?

Anticipation curls in his gut when they approach one of the guest rooms at the second level. Would this be the last time he is going to see the day? Then the door swings open to reveal Hetare in its cage, fluttering its feathers in welcome and chirping happily at their arrival. Touka gives a poisonous look to the vermin and he isn't sure he heard correctly, but his enhanced hearing picks up Touka, muttering under her breath, "…damn thing trying to intimidate us…feeds on fear…"

He has absolutely no idea what she's talking about and he's not about to guess.

Meanwhile, Touka switches off the fans and places a grille over the windows. Confused, he just watched her go about it.

When she's satisfied with her handiwork, she turns back towards him and warns, "Stay here and don't let that damn thing escape from the room. Not one single toilet break, until I get back." That said, she makes him unhook the cage.

"On a count of three, open the cage door and let it fly out. You're going to corner it in one part of the room using your body, wait, you're too short, that won't work -"

Kaneki inwardly winced at the jibe at his height.

"- Use your kagune but don't injure it. Just contain it at one side. I'll grab the cage and leave the room. After that, call back your kagune and just let it fly around or something in this room."

"Wouldn't it be afraid of our kagune?"

"Who cares? It's payback for all the time it sca – all the time it makes an annoying sound."

"You mean the chirping?"

"No," she snaps, "it squawked at me!"

"I'm sure it's probably just surprised or something."

"Whatever, just keep it here and stay in this room. Don't open the door. As for how we're going to contain it, I like to see you have any better ideas!"

"Um..actually…"

"Spit it out, Kaneki!"

"I could just hold it in my hands until you leave?"

Touka tries to hide the disgust (and fear) on her face, but she's not quite successful.

"Why would you even want to touch it? It's dirty."

"Birds are really clean creatures actually."

"Stinking bird lover…" she mutters.

He's not sure he heard right. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing, you shithead. Now hurry up, the faster we can get this over with, the faster we can end this," she hisses.

With trepidation on Touka's face as she monitors his actions, Kaneki unlocks the cage door and gently cups his hands around Hetare who chirps softly in return. He brings it out and runs a finger over its head, and its coos in contentment.

"Would you like to touch it?" He holds it out towards her just as she (slowly) inches away from him.

"It's fine. I'm going to wash the cage now."

Before he can even blink, she had heft the cage on her shoulder and darted out of the room, the door closing behind her.

Looking at Hetare, who blinks back at him with bright eyes, Kaneki smiles. "Looks like it's just you and me, buddy."

His fingers uncurl and Hetare hops around its palm, before wrapping one of its clawed feet around his thumb.

"Chirp!" It goes, before taking flight and playfully circling around his head. Boy and bird laugh happily.

"Kaneki is a dirty traitor and should be shunned," she says to herself, hearing how much those two are enjoying each other's company. She idly muses that Kaneki does have a nice laugh, low and warm and sincere at its core. Wait, what? She scowls at herself. Stupid thoughts…

_Step 2: Hose the cage down with warm water before proceeding with a cloth to clean every nook and cranny._

She places the cage on the toilet floor with a clang and goes to turn on the hose, spraying it with warm water. The stream of water hits the cage and splashes to the ground, before dripping down the grilles into the sewers. Moving nearer to it with a cloth in one hand, she approaches the dripping wet metal edifice.

One never knows what kind of weird things one can find in a hideaway of the nemesis. She's just about to turn off the hose when her fingers slip from the smooth texture of the hose, inadvertently causing a spray of water to hit her right in the face. Spluttering furiously, she wrestles with the hose before managing to stop the jet of water from knocking her head off her shoulders.

"Damn it!" She swears, her hair sticking to her skin, water dripping down her clothes.

Somehow, she gets the feeling that the world is pulling an elaborate prank on her. Or maybe, that demonic entity had laid a curse so that when she touched its hideout, only bad luck would follow her.

But that's ridiculous. She spits out some water in her mouth and sloshes over to grab the cloth which had fallen out of her grasp just now.

With stubbornness lined in the way she sets her teeth, she begins to scrub the cage with a mild form of detergent in the cloth. All the while, she's thinking of curses she can fling at it.

"… Hope a cat catches you…get barbequed in the oven…ghouls killing you…Hah! Roasted bird!..."

When she finished scrubbing down the filthy enclosure, scraped off all manner of droppings and other things she doesn't want to think about, the stench that surrounds it is now pleasant and fresh smelling.

_Step 3: Before rehabilitating the beast, ensure that the cage is entirely dry by placing it under the sun._

While drying means less work for her, it also means that there is a higher chance for something bad to happen within those few hours that are necessary for it to dry out and it can escape and unleash its fury onto the world during that time period. So...

Touka sits outside the room door housing Kaneki and the fiend and leans her back against it. Her clothes have been changed and she's now dry, warm and a bit sleepy in the afternoon haze.

"Touka-chan?" Is that you?" Kaneki calls out when he hears a shuffling outside.

"Yeah. The cage is drying under the sun now." Her eyes slide shut, head thudding softly on the door.

"Do you know how long it'll take? Uh, I haven't finished washing the dishes yet and I think Yoshimura might get mad if I'm in here for too long. There really are a lot of dishes."

"You're not going anywhere and it's fine. We don't have many customers today anyway. Surprisingly, I know, but the shop will survive even without you."

"…You sure know how to make me feel better."

Ah, was she too harsh then? She considers the possibility for a moment before dismissing it.

"You're too sensitive," she retorts.

A muffled sigh, and then: "I really need to go to the washroom."

"No."

"Please?"

"I said no. Are you deaf, idiot?"

Another sigh, this time more resigned than the previous.

"No."

Hetare twitters in sympathy and perches on Kaneki's shoulder, bringing its feathered head under his chin. Kaneki smiles and strokes it lightly, "Yeah, I know."

"What was that?" Touka asks from the other side, confusion in her voice.

"Oh, nothing." With a few hops up to his head, the little bird begins to chirp a melody, much to the joy of Kaneki and to Touka's ever-increasing irritation.

"Tch, it's so noisy."

She can't stand this anymore. Her eyes open and she gets up and moves away, intending on being as far away from those two love birds as possible. She goes downstairs, looking for something to pass the time with.

_Step 4: Once the cage has dried, the creature will enter its domain again to rule over its invisible minions._

After lugging the cage back up the stairs, Kaneki holds the bird in the palm of his hands as it presses its soft head against his cheek. It chirps at him from behind the bars when the cage doors are closed, Touka is watching the exchange with something akin to disgust.

"Hetare is really cute," Kaneki comments, smiling at the active bird which flits from perch to perch.

"Really cute," she says sarcastically, and takes down the grilles from the windows.

"Now get back to work," she snaps, when she turns around and finds him beaming like a moonstruck fool as the bird twitters happily.

Knowing that he shouldn't test her patience, he hastily beats a retreat to the kitchen – only to find a stack of clean plates drying on the rack. He cracks a smile.

"Thank you, Touka-chan."

A beat of silence and then: "Your washing skills are deplorable."

Whether the statement is true or not, it doesn't stop him from chuckling.

* * *

_The creature requires to be moved from location to location at various times of the day. In the morning, near the window, in the afternoon, nearer to the cupboard, and at night, it's placed near the sofas with a blanket draped over it. With a copious amount of resentment, the task was assigned to me. I am duty-bound to do it given that it was a direct order from Yoshimura himself and I cannot disobey. As such, I need to get close to it for three times daily to shift its location, much to my everlasting chagrin. But I shall not fail, that much I am certain of. I shall survive._

Of course Yoshimura picked her out of all the others to do it. She practically lives here and so the full time occupant at Anteiku has no choice but to shift the cage stand from place to place. In the morning, she yawns and stumbles into the lair of the beast, feeling suddenly more awake from moments before when it looks at her with beady eyes and utters a low warning, _"Tweet." _

Her brain, while perking up at the danger in this room, begins to power down when it recognises what the threat was.

_It's just a stupid bird,_ her inner voice complains before stomping away. _And get some coffee before you wake me up for this sort of thing. It can't hurt you at all._

She knows that, really. It's just a small creature composed of feathers and organs and atoms and it would be so easy for her to kill it just like that. But it's looking at her again, small eyes seemed to grow darker and its feathers rustle threateningly. In a quick motion, its wings flare open and Touka reacts without thinking.

Her kagune snaps open in defence, hardening to form crystal shards aimed at the monster.

"Touka-chan, I don't think that is how you treat a bird." The mild voice of Yoshimura snaps her out of her panic as she forcibly retracts her kagune into her shoulders, black and red misting into the air.

"Sorry," she mutters abashedly, "I was taken by surprise."

"That's alright, just try not to break anything this time."

She's left staring at his back, cheeks turning red with embarrassment.

This time, she enters the room again without lifting her head, kneels on the floor and holds the stand at the base, walking over to the next location and placing it none too lightly on the ground again. There's a stir of feathers before the vicious thing settles down and fluffs up, looking like an oversized colourful ball.

"_Chirp_," it goes, and she leaves the room quickly. Probably the change in location daily is to let it perform ancient rites to summon evil spirits to do its bidding. Hah, she would like to see it try. She welcomes anything so long as it gives her a perfectly good reason to make it disappear completely without making Hinami sad in any way.

After a long revitalising drink of coffee, she frowns at herself.

Her brain is now working properly and all she can feel is mild embarrassment. What was she thinking? Evil spirits? Really? Another reason why her mind absolutely cannot be trusted in the morning before coffee hits her taste buds.

During her afternoon break, her muscles are sore and aching from a hard day's work at Anteiku and she still has a few more hours to go before her shift ends. It is with a bad mood that she goes up the stairs to change that vermin's location (again).

In retrospect, slamming the door open was not a good idea.

The door hit the wall with a bang, causing the vermin to screech in alarm, a jagged sound that sends her ghoul hearing ballistic with how high pitched it is. Feels like there's something cutting through her eardrums and ripping them into shreds. To make matters worse, the thing has begun to flap its wings and fly around the cage in anxious circles, hitting the sides painfully before resuming its demented screeching.

"Shut up, you stupid bird!" She shouts over the din, shakily making her way over to it. Just as she's about to rattle the cage to stop that horrible noise, it quietens down and perches on the swing. In the silence, she pushes the stand over to the designated place, all the while keeping an eye on it. It seemed to have calmed down and it's just perching there docilely. This, she can deal with.

She's not sure why, but the words slip out of her mouth, "Don't freak out on me next time."

Striding out of the room, she throws one last glance at it to see it looking back at her cooing softly.

It almost sounds…sad. Her heart twinges.

(It's not just rabbits, even birds can feel lonely.)

The next time she enters again, it's near eight at night. The sofa area is darker and cooler than the cupboards so it would provide a better resting place for it. It perks up the moment she steps into the room, eyes bright and making soft cooing noises and she moves it to the new premise with no fuss.

She places the blankets over it to block out the light so it can rest properly and she can hear the gentle fluttering of its wings as it settles down for the night.

Again, she blames it on how strange her mind had been acting recently when she says, "Goodnight, beastie."

A soft coo answers her.

* * *

_In the matter of ensuring the maintenance of the creature's residence, it must be noted that the beast itself must also be washed. Thankfully, a small bath of a water level of a few centimetres of water would do. No contact is required with it. Although there remains a need to change the bath regularly since it has taken to moulting feathers in recent times. Probably to spite me; I'm sure of it._

Like a fat, bloated spider, it remains in the centre of the cage and unfurls its wings whenever she comes near. So she lurks in the doorway and listens in on the conversation.

"I don't think Hetare looks well."

"Don't worry, Hinami-chan. Birds moult occasionally – which means they pluck off their feathers – and when they do that, they don't feel well. But it's just for a short period of time and I'm sure Hetare will be fine." Kaneki then goes on to explain the uses of moulting and that's her cue to start tuning him out. She's not interested in the physiology of the creature. No, what she has to do now is to refill the water bath. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Just pour the water via a funnel, but it failed to mention that it was a very very short funnel. Which meant going near _it_. While it is in a bad mood. Aggressive too, judging from the way it's flinging itself at the cage doors, causing it to rock wildly from side to side.

"Onii-chan, it's going to hurt itself!" Hinami's voice is tinged with worry and concern about that beast and she can't help but feel a little annoyed. It's a demon, why can't everyone see that?

Kaneki makes a move towards it and makes a strange whistling noise between his teeth. It seems to calm it down somewhat (her inner voice is losing it: _Kaneki the beast whisperer, can you believe it?_ And it collapses into a fit of giggles. Sometimes, she's not entirely sure she's fully sane. Her mind is weird.)

With a sad chirp, it presses its body against the bars of the cage. Like the sap he is, Kaneki lightly runs a finger down its body. Hinami (also, a traitor) skips over to touch it gently with a look of awe in her eyes.

"It's so soft," she breathes out.

"Chirp," goes the bird and rubs its head on Hinami's fingers.

Kaneki has the look in his eyes when he sees something especially touching and he likes it very much, all soft sincerity and sweetness in his gaze as he watches the girl and the bird bonding together. It's really a disgusting sight and Touka has to avoid her eyes, although her cheeks flush pink as she ducks her head, suddenly wanting to be out of this room, away from that gentle radiance on his face.

"Oh, onee-chan. Come say hi to Hetare!"

Damn. She casts her eye wildly around the room and finding no suitable excuse, drags herself reluctantly over to the trio.

Just as she's about to come close, that infernal vermin warbles a high note at her.

"What it's doing?" She frowns and slowly changes her position until Kaneki is shielding her from that thing.

"Oh, that's a welcome note. It's excited to see you." With that, he places two very warm hands on her arms and pushes her in front of it.

She tenses up.

The bird is now hopping excitedly like a demented spring and she takes a violent step back – into Kaneki. Her body slams into him and they go down in a tangle of limbs and she inwardly curses herself at how careless she had been. Groaning, both of them get up and dust themselves off.

Kaneki notices that Touka is surprisingly quiet, not calling down the fury of the high heavens down onto him after that fall.

Touka slowly turns towards him and it's only then can he see the murder in her eyes.

"KANEKI!"

Ah, guess he spoke too soon.

While onii-chan and onee-chan are off about having fun, although they sure are pretty noisy, Hinami will look after Hetare. She picks up funnel on the floor and places it on the table. No idea what it's supposed to be used for. Anyway, she notices that the bird bathwater is getting kinda murky and there are stray feathers inside. She thinks it will be a good idea to change the bathwater so that the pretty bird will feel much better and she can play with it together with her onee-chan and onii-chan! They will be so proud of her.

Easing the door open slightly so as to not spook Hetare, she sticks her hand in to take out the birdbath, making sure that the opening isn't so big for the little bird to escape.

Success! It's out!

With a little skip, she dashes off to refill the container, leaving Hetare alone in the room.

"Chirp." It tweets forlornly to itself, now that it's left alone, another feather drifting to the floor of the cage.

A short while later, the pattering of tiny feet running across wooden boards causes Hetare to straighten up and stare hopefully at the door. Little girl is back! With clean water, it seems.

It twitters in greeting and hops forward eagerly.

Hinami is just as eager to get back to the bird, walking quickly to it as the water in the container sloshes dangerously from side to side. Not a single drop spilled despite her hasty pace, and she's really happy about that feat.

"Here, birdie!"

She unlatches the cage door and places the crystalline water inside, much to the happiness of Hetare who coos in pleasure and splashes happily in its bird bath.

It's so cute! She grins at the bird which splashes some of the water at her in a bid to play around, much to her childish delight.

"Hetare, stop it," Hinami giggles.

This is the scene where Touka and Kaneki return to, a small girl and her bird, one laughing joyfully and the other singing a sweet melody, voices high and clear in the summer air.

Claws loosen in Touka's chest, her breaths coming a little easier. She is tempted to do something, but she's not sure what so she turns her head to the side and catches sight of Kaneki who has an idiotic doting expression on his face.

"Hmph," she says, but her lips curl up at the edges anyway.

_The demon sings surprisingly well. Maybe it means to enchant us with its dark magic, but in any case, I shall keep watch on it along with my other comrades._

* * *

Her relationship with it isn't improving exactly, but neither is it festering into hatred. All things considered, she has more or less accepted its presence at Anteiku. Sure, it can get pretty annoying at times, chirping madly and flapping its wings for no good reason other than to intimidate her. As time pass, she supposes that the critter is absolutely harmless, no voodoo or black magic involved and its bright plumage adds a splash of colour to the room at Anteiku.

Even though she's more or less okay with it, that doesn't mean she would volunteer herself to be in the same room as that thing for a longer period of time than necessary. There should be no reason for this, but then again, Hinami's persuasion has never made much sense, which results in Touka still going along with her anyway.

"Hinami, why are we here again?" Touka asks exasperatedly.

"Well, I thought we should all have some fun with Hetare now that it has stopped m-m-moulting." She looks to Kaneki for confirmation of her pronunciation and when he gives her an encouraging nod, she presses on, "So onee-chan, onii-chan, Hetare and I will all be together!"

They're all in one of the guest rooms in which Hetare is housed at and Touka nervously glances at the grilles on the windows and the locked door. She has a sneaking suspicion what is going to happen next, but she's powerless to stop it. Not unless she reveals to them both that she absolutely detests birds.

"Uh Hinami, onee-chan is quite busy now, can I drop by later?" It's a last ditch attempt to get out of this metaphorical quicksand before it swallows her whole.

"Please? Just for a moment?" Hinami widens her eyes, the hope in them radiates through.

Damn, she hates it when Hinami does that, simply because she can feel her resistance crumbling away.

Touka gives a sigh and waves her hand in the air, "Okay."

With growing horror, she watches as Hinami brings her hands closer to Hetare, wrapping her little fingers delicately around its fragile body. It chirps and nestles contentedly in her palm. Kaneki walks over to stroke the feathers on the top of its head, and it shuts its eyes, burrowing closer to the warmth.

Okay, that's a really nice scene, but can she go now?

Suddenly, her palms become sweaty and her breathing has gone up a notch. _Control yourself, it's just a stupid bird. Breathe, Touka!_

She sucks in a deep breath.

"Touka onee-chan, here." Hinami walks over and shoves the chirping thing to her face. She has to clamp down on her knee jerk reaction to backpedal until she reaches the opposite end of the country.

"Uh, it's cute," she says, and makes no movement other than to stand rigidly, body locked tight in tension.

"Do you wanna touch it? It's so soft!" Hinami squeals and moves it closer to her face.

Touka has a brief recollection of Yoriko doing something similar, except instead of a bird, it was a large bento box of food that was waving around her face.

"Uh, no, it's really okay, Hinami." Her eyes land on Kaneki and she smiles grimly to herself.

Holding the arms of the young girl, Touka brings the bird over to the raven-haired male and declares, "Here, Kaneki, you hold it."

Seeing nothing wrong with the request, he shrugs, "Okay."

With deft fingers, he transfers Hetare over to himself such that he's cradling it in his hands. And then, whatever amount of respect Touka has for him promptly combusts when he makes an upward motion with his hands - bird included.

In an explosion of movement, the surprised bird takes to the air with a bemused _squawk?_ and begins to swiftly soar around the room. The result is one amused Kaneki, a clapping Hinami and one entirely petrified Touka.

This is not a good day at all.

In fact, it's so far down in her list of 'Things that I would never ever do in my life' that it's actually below 'Jump off a flying plane without any parachute' and 'Tell Tsukiyama that he is a beautiful rose among thorns in _French_, accompanied by - what else? - a rose'. Hell no is she ever going to do any of those but it seems that life is playing a cruel joke on her by fulfilling one of her nightmares: Be in the same room as a flying bird.

Watching it soar gracefully through the air, the whisper of wind as it rustles through its colourful feathers, the sheer beauty and elegance of its flight is making her mad. And irritated. And so fucking pissed off over this smug piece of flying shit that is definitely taking too much joy in flying.

"Onee-chan!" Hinami's voice startles her and snaps the girl out of her thoughts.

"Huh?"

From the corner of her eyes, she sees a flash of red and she whips around to see – oh.

Her kagune.

Sharp and jagged and pulsing.

It's rapidly crystallising into a glassy material; the sheen of crimson now sharpening into bloody red slashes, the edges of her wings ragged and sharp.

She's just about to retract it back when a sharp cry causes her to look up.

Clawed talons are approaching her face and above that is Hetare with its beak wide opened screeching madly. An attack. It happens so fast she's not entirely sure of the exact details.

All she knows is that she sees the claws about to scratch her, freezes up, her brain screaming **danger** and her kagune lets loose a volley of shards in the air. Hinami shrieks, but it's a muffled shout: Kaneki has covered her with his body, shielding her from the ukaku ghoul's unintentional attack.

RC cells are lodged in the furniture, wood splintering in all directions and plaster coats the air where some of her more violent shards have embedded itself in the wall. The sofa seemed to be like a porcupine, multiple scarlet spikes stabbed through the upholstery. The ceiling took the worst of it, a constellation of vibrant red fragments quivering gently; such was the explosive power behind them. Meanwhile, the window cracked but it hasn't shattered yet, the metal grilles seemingly to have taken the brunt of the impact. It has twisted and warped out of shape, but it still clings tenaciously to the window frame.

As for the occupants of the room, they are shaken, but not fatally wounded. Kaneki has a few cuts on his back, which bleeds sluggishly, a couple of smaller shards embedded in them. His quick thinking paid off when Hinami emerges unscathed, unsteady on her feet but looking no worse for the wear. In the corner, seeds are scattered on the floor and the carpet is slowly soaking up a puddle of water. Hetare's cage is overturned and Hetare –

\- isn't anywhere.

"Hetare?" Touka asks, feeling like a child all over again, confused and scared when she knows she has done something really wrong and doesn't know what to do in the aftermath. Her father would pat her head and tell her, "it's fine." But her dad isn't here and she's not feeling any better.

"Hetare?" she tries again, ignoring the waver in her voice. No answer.

There's something sour in her mouth and her heart is clenched tight in her chest, feeling like she's suffocating from the inside out.

"Hetare!" She shouts again, and there's a prickling in her eyes that wasn't there before.

Again, not one single chirp. Or a twitter. She wouldn't have minded a squawk, as ridiculous as it seemed.

She stands there, her voice having dried up entirely, numb to the core.

_It was only scared and thought I was an enemy. _

_So what did I do?_

_I killed Hetare._

_I killed it with my own kagune._

_My own half-wing._

Her kagune melts into nothingness and Kaneki looks worriedly at the girl who has gone still and her eyes holding a terrible emptiness in them. He's about to put a comforting hand on her shoulder when Hinami suddenly pipes up, "Hetare!"

There's a scuffling sound, followed by some glass sliding around and Hinami emerges from a mound of sofa cushions which have tumbled onto the ground, holding something bright coloured in her hands.

The thing lifts up its head, blinking with its familiar black eyes.

It's looking directly at Touka now. It cocks its head to the side, and says, "_Tweet_."

She's staring back with wide eyes and she breathes out, "Hetare."

"Chirp!"

"Hetare?"

"Chirp!"

"You're…alive."

At the word 'alive', it lifts its head and tweets a short high note: joy.

With a flutter of wings, Hetare flies over to her and perches on her shoulder. Everyone all noted that she didn't even flinch at all, just stared wonderingly at that small bright figure. Hesitatingly, she lifts her hands, brings it nearer to it. Hetare hops closer to her finger and pushes its head underneath her finger. It has a smooth ticklish sensation, so gentle and delicate.

"It's soft," she says, surprised.

"Yeah. It's nice, isn't it?" Hinami shares a smile at Kaneki, who pats her on her head.

Touka looks back to both of them and then turns to look at the bird that doesn't shy away from her, who sometimes get lonely and can be a real pain at times, but it also chirps at her when she enters the room and sings the loveliest songs she has ever heard, and she doesn't fight the smile that steals her face.

"It's a beautiful bird."

* * *

All in all, the manual was pretty useful in the beginning. It helped to organize her thoughts and made things simple, lending some black humour where her hatred was about to overwhelm her. She didn't have to see beyond the clear instructions she was given; all she had to do was to keep her head down and obeyed.

But now, she knows that if all she did was just to blindly follow the instructions, it would mean that she would have never dreamt to look up and watch the sun, the brilliant radiance bursting into the sky in an explosion of bright colours.

It's a new day, a new promise, a new hope, but it will always simply be, just a little bird by the name of…

Hetare.

"_Chirp!"_

* * *

**Every time someone leaves a review - be it an average human, a long lost sea serpent, or a fossilized dinosaur that came back to life and is rampaging across the world as we speak - a virtual high five from my authorial hand is automatically sent to you :D**

**Cheers!**


	6. Reborn from the stars

**I just returned from a five hour continuous scholarship assessment. I think I lost a few years off my life aha. If anyone needs me, I'll be cycling around trying to burn off the excess adrenaline. (It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's some crazy kid cycling into the air! Call NASA now!) XD**

**As always, to my two betas; SirGregSloth and xxxDreamingFlowerxxx, thank you both for your help! Any remaining mistakes are mine.**

* * *

At five, Kaneki has short black hair that always brushes against his eyelashes and makes his mum laugh whenever he pretends to be unable to see and bumps into her instead. It's fun, for one thing, and it brings a smile to her face. In terms of the number of friends he has, it's not a lot. In fact, he can count the number of friends he has on one finger.

It's not a lot, but he thinks that he has only the best of the best. His name is Kuro and he, well, he's a cat. A cat toy.

They have a lot of fun together and Kuro is one of the most patient person he has even known and is a great listener. Kuro is awesome like that.

Kuro keeps him company when he's getting tucked in by his mum and she leaves and closes the door shuts and his room floods with darkness. But he doesn't shout or cry, much less whimper. Because Kuro isn't afraid of monsters, not like how he is; he knows with an unshakable belief typical of children, that Kuro will protect him for all sorts of nasty things creeping in the shadows.

And so when he accidentally loses Kuro one day at the playground, he's bawling unabashedly. Big, fat tears roll down his cheeks to splash on the ground.

One moment Kuro was next to him and when he turned his head to watch a butterfly fluttering by, he looked back again and the only thing left, was just an empty space beside him, Kuro nowhere to be found.

Nearby, children shriek with glee on the seesaw and he's angry that they get to be so happy. It's not fair. Kuro is gone and he's feeling lonely and lost while all the other children have their own friends to play with. It's not fair, he thinks again, and a fresh wave of tears erupts.

That's when his mum appears, a lovely angel with warm brown eyes and soothing voice that usually has the power to melt his sadness away. But not today. Today is a tra-ge-dy, a big word he learnt from reading his father's books and he likes how it rolls off his tongue, all serious and sad and makes his mouth curl downwards. Today, he has lost an important person in his life and that cuts him deep. He already has lost his dad, now Kuro too? It's not fair.

"Don't cry, Kaneki. I'll get you a new one."

He is five years old then, and there is no logic in getting another Kuro. In fact, it doesn't matter what age anyone is. Replacements always pale in comparison to the real thing, a shallow substitute for what has been something dear and precious to you.

It isn't the same.

Kuro cannot be replaced.

It is… unthinkable.

He heaves in another breath to let loose another wail, sick and miserable with how much he misses his best friend.

(He doesn't know then, that this is just the start of how he will lose many precious things over the years, how they will slip past his fingers like sand on the beach and through no fault of his, leave him alone again.)

His heart is still young and raw, and it bleeds easily, stings more. He is just a young child acquitted with the meaning of loss and it _hurts._

His mother pulls him into a hug and he curls his fingers into her sunflower-yellow dress, clutches what he knows to be his lifeline in a world that has suddenly turned cold and dangerous and who snatchers best friends away in the blink of an eye.

His mother must understand, her eyes growing soft and she runs a hand through his hair.

"Come," she says simply, slips a hand into his, "Let's go find him then."

She looks at him with brown eyes the colour of warm honey that she makes him in the morning, and he nods and wipes away the tears in his eyes.

He has to be strong.

He has to find Kuro.

He spends the whole day scouring the park, voice hoarse from shouting Kuro's name over and over again. His legs ache and throb like never before and there are fresh tear tracks on his cheeks, the glimmer of tears that sneaks out from the edges of his eyes even though he tells himself he will not cry.

They search and search till night falls, him getting more and more desperate while his mum is ever patient and unrelenting in her search. Above their heads is a velvet darkness that cloaks the sky, tiny pinpricks of light piercing through. Stars, his mum says, aren't they beautiful?

No matter how much the stars glimmer and shine, they cannot help him find Kuro. In short, their beauty is for naught. What's the point if they can't help him find Kuro? What's the point if he's only looking at them without Kuro? What's the point of shining above the heads of men if they are useless in even illuminating the location of Kuro? The stars are old and they do not care about the whims of men, least of all, a small child, and the shine cruelly in the night.

His stomach grumbles loudly, startling him. Now that he thinks about it, he's hungry. Very hungry. But the thought of leaving Kuro to fend for himself while he fills his belly with food is unspeakably selfish and doesn't sit well with all the sickness in his guts. So he swallows his protest and doggedly stumbles on, his head echoing with Kuro, Kuro, Kuro.

His attachment with Kuro isn't born out of loneliness. It plays a small part yet the main bulk of it lies in the fact that he's the only toy his mum has even given him. Even at a young age, he knows that his family is unlike the others. While they may have large houses and _thousands and millions and bazillion toys! _He only has a cramped apartment that's filled with the delicate scent of his mum's perfume and her constant presence around. It's enough. He's happy. For this is the essential truth for all families; it's not about how much money there is in the bank. It's about spending time with his family and for that, it's all that he's asked for and always will.

The gnawing ache of losing Kuro strikes deep in his chest, an almost physical void that calls out to be filled.

And like a godsend, a wonder, miracle or just a blessing that he has the best mum in the world, because his mum returns with Kuro in her hands. There are red scratch marks on her hands, leaves tangled up in her hair and her bright yellow dress is now smeared with mud and torn at the edges. There are some things a child sees, and some things a child don't. Those are one of them. Instead, Kaneki sees Kuro in her hands, sees his mum's eyes glinting with gentle mirth and he straightens up, grins and catapults straight into his mum's embrace.

"You've found Kuro!"

He takes it gingerly from her and she smiles at the way he jumps around and hugs her again before he's running circles round her, his joy and enthusiasm such a contrast to how he is usually so shy and quiet.

Kaneki runs an eye over the gift that was bestowed to him, takes in the familiar shape of paws, whiskers and –

Something's wrong.

Something's very wrong.

Kuro is… _broken._

Kuro's ear hangs by a thread, the stuffing coming out like cottons. Its paw is ripped, the threads having been snapped off. One of its eyes is missing and all that's left is just an empty patch of black of where its eye used to be.

His mum is talking, but it's barely registering.

"… Found him… hidden behind some bushes… kids took it away… played with it…"

"Kuro's broken," he mumbles, "I don't want him."

Such is the capricious nature of the human heart, and fickle still are the hearts of children. But one cannot blame them for they are still young and there is much to learn. After all, what is broken, isn't gone.

Disappointment flashes through his mum's face, but Kaneki doesn't catch it, can barely see past the perceived misfortune of his youth.

But his mum is patient, mum is kind, mum knows how to get him out of this bind.

She sweeps back a curl of hair that has fallen astray, gently takes his hand into hers and tells him, "Broken things aren't gone completely. They're still there; you just have to look deeper."

He is five and he looks at the torn ear and gaping hole in Kuro's face, and he doesn't understand.

So his mother takes him by the hand, brings him home and she looks so beautiful and wise and gentle that he sits quietly at her side and watches her. She places a needle and thread in his hands and takes the same things for herself too.

"You have one and I have one, right?"

He nods.

"Now watch."

Under the soft light of the moon, it casts a gentle luminance on the boy and his mother. She weaves and spins _magic_ into Kuro, infusing it with moonlight enchantment, a delicate lattice of silver, strong and tenacious like the strands of a spider web under the benign gaze of the moon.

She mends the tears and rips with smooth needlework, her deft fingers weaving a tapestry of fascination. It was the same hands that she used to stroke his hair, wipe a smudge of dirt on his cheek, and make a cup of honey and other endless things that are familiar and home all at once. He watches, breathes, and he is utterly compelled by it, amazed by the miracles that she is threading through Kuro, restoring the same silky black fur to its full glory.

But no masterpiece is done without a mark or a brand from the artist.

From a little box that lies above his bed that he never gave much thought to, his mum withdraws a small black disk, the perfect size to serve as an eye. When she brings it closer to him, Kaneki can see it is speckled with tiny glimmers, droplets of light in a sea of darkness.

It's a star-speckled eye and he breathes in a startled gasp of joy.

She sews in the new eye, one that glints even in the dark, a perpetual wink to him and he watches and breathes and clutches the needle and thread to his chest. Upon finishing, she daintily bites the thread off and turns to face him, places her needle and thread on the table.

It sits unchanged, exactly the same as what he holds in his hands. He reaches out tentatively to the needle and he can feel traces of warmth from his mother's hand.

"Would you like to learn?" she asks, with dark circles under her eyes and strands of hair falling out of her bun. But her eyes gleam bright and her lips tug up at the corners as she gazes contentedly at the restored Kuro.

"Yes," he says eagerly and nods once, twice, thrice for impact. Excitement bubbles in his chest; imagine, being able to weave _magic._

A brilliant smile lights up her face and she suddenly looks ten years younger, radiates with an inner light.

"Then I'll teach you," she says and places him on her lap, "to breathe life into broken things again."

She picks up the needle, adjusts his grip on his own one, and tells him, "Always remember, that broken things are whole once. _And what was whole, is never gone_."

It is a start. A start of something more.

Broken kites, ripped clothing, snapped off stationery, frayed bags, shattred screens and most importantly: torn books.

He learns and grows and holds them with gentle hands and a critical eye, patches them up with painstaking care and from the forges of his efforts, he brings them back from the precipice and they come back whole again. Maybe not whole as they once were, but enough, enough for them to not fade away into obscurity.

Kaneki takes joy in every single thing he recovers from the brink of death. What he does isn't simple mending.

It's creation.

It's finding new purpose for the lost, the broken, the shattered.

In short, they are reclaimed.

It's knowing that whatever state of abandonment or brokenness he finds them in, there is always a spark of something that he can coax back into a steady fire. He doesn't see his mum much, these days. But when she notices his work – if she even notices him, at all, sometimes – she'll smile and she looks so proud.

He lives for moments like this.

He is still a young child who loves too much, helps too much, and that is perfectly fine.

He is just a young child, but he knows deep in his heart, engraved in his bones, seared into his mind, that _broken doesn't mean useless. _

It means to be… _reborn._

* * *

Kaneki is older now, ten to be exact and nine to be not. His birthday was just yesterday and he's one year older. He puffs up a little with how big he is getting, how he'll one day grow up big and strong and powerful, and ease the burden his mum seems to bear. Her back is always hunched and she's always in her room, always so busy, always helping, always so far away.

But he's a boy of ten now, that's a big number, and he can handle it. Sure, he is a little lonely, a little sad, a little lost, but he reads his dad's books and gets sucked into the pages and that's fine. It's alright. He won't complain, won't cry, won't whine about this because remember, he is a big boy now, and big boys are supposed to be strong.

Standing on tiptoes, he can almost reach the cookie jar that lies tantalisingly close, and even as his fingers scrabble uselessly in the air, he sticks out his tongue and strains forward because it is so close, so very close and –

"Kaneki? A-a-are you hungry?" His mother asks, amusement in her features even as her forehead creases with wrinkles and heavy lines weigh down the edges of her face. She steps out from the door and shuffles over. He almost expects her limbs to creak with how busy she is.

Lately, his mum is making bracelets to sell. Other times it would be paper flowers or stationery sets. Sometimes it would be charms to ward off misfortune, bad dreams or sickness. (He wonders why those never seem to work for his mum. Maybe because she has made so many and gave a small part of her magic to those charms and what's left of her blessing is just too small and weak to protect her. That sends a spreading ache in his chest and he is too young then, to put a name to it, nor understand why.)

"Mum!" He clambers down and runs towards her because he misses her, and it feels so good to see her venturing out of the room and is here walking and talking to _him_. He's giddy with happiness.

"Are you hungry?" she asks again, and it comes out sad and ashamed, words that speak volumes of accidental neglect.

He nods eagerly, cookies momentarily forgotten in light of the bigger prize: lunch with his mum.

"Get your things, then. Water bottle, bag and your shoes…"

Before she can complete her spiel, Kaneki is already racing out, snatching his bag and things out. But he makes sure not to yank on his bag too hard – he just stitched up the straps a few weeks ago and he doesn't want them to snap again. Kuro, his ever present companion, sits inside the main compartment of his bag, his one star-speckled eye glinting as usual. Because kids are kids and they're not exactly the best caretaker in the world, Kuro has undergone numerous 'surgeries'. Threads crisscross its entire body; the ears, nose, paws and tail. But that's okay. Kaneki thinks it's one of the coolest things _ever_.

In a moment, he is done and twitching impatiently at the door, ready to make a move.

"Hurry up," he calls out and his mum smiles, shakes her head, gathers her purse and heads out the door. He slips his hands into hers and smiles when she tightens her grip, holds him gently in her warm hands.

Lunch is wonderful.

Lunch with his mum is even better.

But lunch with his mum and _desert_?

"This is amazing!" he exclaims, eyes wide as dinner plates as he scans the selection of cakes on display.

"Now just choose one. I don't want you to have a tummy ache if you fall ill from eating too much."

"But mummm," he whines, "There's just so many of them."

Should he choose the chocolate lava cake? But what about the decadent cheesecake, guaranteed to have a cheese meltdown, or so the sign proclaims. But it's been a long time since he last had Hokkaido chiffon cupcakes. Oh, and is that black forest? Look at it. Just _look_ at it.

He throws out his hands in defeat. "I can't decide. They all look so good. Mum, will you choose for me?"

"Hmm… I'll take a strawberry delight cake then."

He makes a face. Strawberries are for girls and he's not a girl. He's a strong man of an impressive ten years and he is missing a front tooth (_It's from a fight_, he confides to Hide and ignores the look of disbelief Hide throws at him.)

"I think I would like a chocolate lava cake instead. Can we have that, please?" He's breathing hard on the glass panels and misses the way his mum hides a smile.

After their deliciously awesome, mind-bendingly spectacular, fantastically rich in flavour and aesthetically pleasing, densely packed with fillings and decadent with many chocolate layers. His vocabulary is superb from reading so many books and okay, he's just showing off to his mum who claps in delight and he grins back in return.

They go to the park and he's smiling widely, speaking in an excited babble on what his mum has missed and he runs a few steps forward before darting back to his mum's side.

He could be high on sugar, but it's more of the fact that after what felt like forever, his mother is finally going out with him and they had lunch and glorious desert and happiness bubbles through his bloodstream, like fizzy drinks in summer.

The weather is pleasant, the Sun basks them in a warm glow, the occasional breeze ruffling their hair and clothes and the shrieks of children all part of a normal day in the park. Except, it's all the more sweeter when his mum is here.

They sit on a bench to watch others, contently leaning back with eyes half shut, soaking in the warmth. Kaneki is getting drowsy, and his mum pulls him closer so his head rests on her arm and he shifts, curls closer to her warmth. It's… peaceful. Nice and comforting in a way he hasn't felt for a long time.

When something dazzling flutters into his line of vision, he blinks, yawns and stretches his arms to the sky. The brightly coloured thing swoops near his face and that's when he realises it's a butterfly. A blue one. With luminescent wings that dazzles him with reflected light.

"Look, mum! It's a _Sasakia charonda_!"

"What's that?"

"It's the name of the butterfly! And look, its wings are blue, which means it's a male. I know it cause I read it dad's books!" He says smugly, gleefully, showing off in childish delight.

"That's nice," she smiles, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she, too, watches it flit around their heads. It swoops down, turns sharply to the left and avoids missing his ear before it flutters its wings and banks away. The Sun reflects back its iridescent wings, throwing a myriad of dazzling colours like a diamond glinting. It's only when it shyly hovers on his right does he sees its wings clearly.

One of them is shredded at the top.

It has a broken wing, incomplete. And that explains it. Why its flight is so erratic, flying low and then tipping up before it spiral downwards. What he thought to be the butterfly dancing was in actual fact, _struggling_ to fly properly in a straight course. It's drunkenly changing direction, getting buffeted and pushed down by the wind currents. All the while, it's always heading upwards every time it loses height. Upwards… What is it trying to reach?

Tilting his head back and back and back, he has to squint his eyes and shield them against the harsh glare of the – oh. _Oh._

The Sun.

The butterfly is just trying to reach the Sun. Painfully. Valiantly. Courageously.

"A butterfly with a broken wing… I don't think it can find a mate so easily now," his mum comments.

And he flinches from that, flinches because it must hurt, being so alone all the time and not being able to find someone. He has Hide and Kuro and he's grateful for them, eases away the edge of loneliness that eats at his soul on bad days. But this butterfly? This beautiful, _beautiful__,_broken-winged butterfly?

It has no one. And that settles it, really. The butterfly wants to meet the Sun, dreams of reaching the skies and touching the clouds. Then he'll help it. Up there in the sky, he thinks that it'll be easier to find another butterfly like it, one that's too stubborn and headstrong to stop, one with a strong will and who continues to beat its wings and fly higher and higher and higher.

"Will you wait for me here for a while?" He asks and his mum can see the kernel of determination in his eyes, something strong and steady burning.

She nods, a gleam of satisfaction.

Gently, oh so gently, he cups his hands around the butterfly which has settled on his shoulder for a rest. Its wings brush against his fingers and it makes a few inquisitive circles around his palm before settling down, patient and unafraid.

And its wings glinting, glinting, _torn._

On closer look, he gets to see greater details in the patterns of its wings. The sides are edged with black and electric blue sprawls out from the middle, bright and arresting. Spots of white adorn its wings, looking like flecks of snow.

Kaneki takes care not to crush it, and runs all the way to the top of the park, a small plateau that rises gently up the ground and he's panting and sweating, but the butterfly nestles between his hands and he can't give up, can't give up, just want to reach the Sun and the sky, a butterfly's dream and I.

As he steadily makes his way up, his legs burn and his breathing is ragged. He's unused to the physical exertions, but the urgency builds up within him, driving him forward and banishing the protest of his muscles to the back of his mind.

What he focuses on is the thing that lies as light as a feather in his hands and how the responsibility he feels for it weighs him down like an anchor, sinking and grounding him and tethering him to this moment. It's a homing beacon for his actions, brings him the same sense of serenity and peace whenever he's fixing and mending old knickknacks. He knows this feeling, recognises and calls it his own, embraces it with open arms because here he is, given purpose to serve a broken thing.

This must be what broken things feel like; every time he pulls on a thread to secure back an eye or carefully glue back the spine of a book or prop up a lamp that has been snapped in half.

It's like being remade again, creation surging through his vein and he breathes through flames and emerges, whole and complete and burning with it.

He may not be broken, but the broken things steadies him, grounds him down the same way he does to them and this familiarity settles into his bones, makes him stronger. It's a mutual give and take, one that he does so gladly and with all his heart.

His mother must think that way too, whenever she ventures out of her room – getting lesser and lesser as time pass – and sees him with a needle and thread and glue and tape and all manners of tools and equipment needed to breathe life into the broken things again. She will bestow on him a radiant smile, pride flaring in her chest.

As he reaches the top of the park, he casts a glance down and yes, it's still there, blue wings catching the ray of the Sun and throwing out sparkles of colours like a miniature disco ball. It's so beautiful that he doesn't even care about the missing patch on one of its wings or that it can't fly properly. He is just completely and utterly unbothered by its incompleteness.

Because it's a beautiful, vibrant thing that pulses with life and fights and struggles and breathes and never ever gives up.

At ten, Kaneki learns that broken things make him feel a little less empty inside, like he plays a part in the grand scheme of things even if it just one small thing. It's a small accomplishment, but large in its significance, and this is a moment that he's going to cherish for the rest of his life.

When he untangles his fingers to reveal the butterfly, the sun catches on the vibrant blue of its wings, he tells it, "I hope you'll find someone who accepts you, torn wing or not, but anyway, I still think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

(He doesn't know then, that his words will echo in his head when he meets a girl called Touka, whose hair has the same shade of blue as the butterfly, and has a mean temper, a foul mouth and one of the loveliest kagune he has ever known.)

The butterfly bends down to press a kiss to his palms before it flutters its wings and takes off. Its flight pattern is still shaky at first, but it's gaining confidence. It still gets buffeted by the wind, but it unerringly rights itself after a few seconds, picks up the pace again to pursue the pathway to the skies. It is already above his head now and it is slowly, gradually, unfailingly, reaching higher and higher, a flash of vibrant blue against the sky.

There is a beauty in broken things, that he knows, as he watches its gleaming wings flash and shimmer, and knows it to be truer than anything he has ever known.

When he returns to his mum and recounts his adventure, his mum's eyes sparkle and soften, and her smile stretches to the corners and she's so proud, so proud of her son that her heart feels like bursting. Kaneki grins back, a steady wisdom from this incident burning in the back of his mind.

That night, she treats him to ice cream and he chooses rainbow sparkles. He would make a comment about how rainbows are for girls, but at this point, he's too busy stuffing his face full of the delicious ice cream to care. It is a kaleidoscope of colours with bright yellows and blue and pink and green swirling in ice cream goodness and he eats it all, bubbles popping on his tongue as the sparkle part in its name becomes evident.

His mother had never looked happier. (And so was he, given that this was one of the last memory he has of her. It hurts and soothes at the same time, if that is possible. It hurts that she's gone, but soothed that at least she was happy, had a nice memory to cling onto just before she passed away.)

From then on, every time he goes to a park, he's always on the lookout for butterflies with shredded wings, trying to look for a glimpse of the vibrant blue of the sea on a sunny day. He finds that broken-winged butterflies are infinitely more beautiful and precious than those whose wings are whole.

And when he catches sight of them, he is reminded back then, of his mother whose smiles were as brilliant as the Sun, how he was always reaching out towards her even though she was so busy and far away.

He never stops trying, holding on to her memory with a determination born out of desperation and sorrow.

He misses her even now.

* * *

Kaneki is now eighteen years old, is a little wiser, a little smarter and still a child at heart.

He meets a girl who's a ghoul and she becomes his co-worker and somehow, became a friend.

Her name is Touka and her hair is the same blue as the butterfly with the broken wing and acts like she's a wounded animal when she loses patience with him, all snarls and unsheathed claws. Frankly, she's terrifying.

But he knows that to judge a book by its cover is not a smart thing to do, neither is it recommended nor does it serve him well. He has always been patient and he smiles, watches and learns.

There are cracks in Touka's gaze when she thinks there is no one watching, bitterness and hatred twisting her smiles. Her guard is always on high, and armour encasing her entirely, barely lets in any room for her heart to show. There are shards in her heads and there are shards pushing others away, as much as of a challenge as cowardice. She fights her way through the briars and tangles, through her inherent brokenness and tries her best, really, when she sometimes cracks and crumbles. But not once, not once does she let herself _shatter_ and for that bravery, Kaneki is always gentle, always kind, knows when to get her out of her bind.

He can see that she tries so very hard to keep her secrets inside and all her skeletons locked up.

He can see her trying to hold it all together in front of the other ghouls, in the way she gamely shovels down Yoriko's food with a set look and also, in the way she tries her damn best to smile at a little boy and his older sister who walks down the street, hand in hand.

He sees it all.

He's there when she first reveals her identity as a ghoul, sees the flash of self-hatred in her black and red eyes and the imperceptible flinch when her kagune flares out like an avenging angel, beautiful and deadly. She seems to be almost sorry that she has to do this, but she did it anyway, shoved the meat into his mouth and beat him up because she is the girl who never backs down from a fight, no matter what form it takes, and he is always the boy who needs someone to be stronger than him, stronger _for_ him.

It works out. Splendidly.

Kaneki learns to rely on her in almost the same way she does with him.

A day at Anteiku isn't complete if he doesn't mess up a simple task and Touka doesn't give him hell for it.

Because it was never about how he_ wasn't_ a clumsy person and neither is it about how Touka was not the most patient person in the world.

It was none of it.

Instead, it was knowing that there is someone out there caring about him, making sure that what he does is his absolute best, nothing less than that. After all, his lonely days of returning to an empty house, with an even emptier heart, he tries to smile at his constant companions of all these years: his books. What comes out twists into bitterness instead.

When she appears with her typical distaste of books, he thinks maybe that's what he has been looking for. Someone to show his heart on his sleeve. Trying to convince her to _at least take a look at Takatsuki __S__en, Touka-chan, you won't regret it_, ends up paving a sure-fire way to a heated and passionate argument on both sides that turns into something soft and exasperating later on.

He thinks the word is: fond.

For her, it is a bone deep assurance that there was someone who would walk back to her with a steaming cup of coffee with a rabbit latte art on top after one of her rants, and who will sit next to her and won't say a word despite all the scathing things she had hurled at him which he shakes off like water off a duck's back.

She thinks the experience is… comforting.

In the end, it was just someone, someone significant, someone important, someone who didn't find their way into the other's heart so much as slip in unnoticed and wound up nestling in there happily.

This is what Kaneki at eighteen learnt: _broken things deserved to be loved._

* * *

What was it that crossed his mind when he told her to use him as human fuel?

What was it that explicitly trusted his life into Touka, where one fatal bite in the wrong place or if she held on for one second all too long, was all it took to kill him?

What was it, really?

It's not that hard once you think about it actually. It's not that hard at all.

Because being marked is not the same as belonging to someone. The first is skin deep and the second, soul deep. Given a chance, he will always take the latter. That's why there was no hesitation when he bares his shoulder, his gaze steady and sure as he tells her what to do. The fact that she touches him with shaky hands, digs her fingers deep into his shoulder to hide her tremor only makes him more certain of his decision.

_Soul deep._

"Do it," he tells her, and means, _I'm here, don't be afraid._

She replies, "Here goes," and means, _I trust you._

She bites down. Teeth grinding against the bone in his shoulder before she adjusts, twists her jaw upwards, and shears off his flesh.

In blazing pain, he watches her kagune flare to life, her eyes bleeding over to black and red It's his first time watching a full reveal of her ghoul nature that he knows to be her blood legacy; a terror, a monster, a demon – things she calls herself and pushes those sharp words deeper into her heart.

Looking at her kagune crystallizing in a backdrop of hungry flickering flames, how the individual shards harden to form a delicate lattice that glimmers, he is looking at the butterfly with the shredded wing dancing towards the Sun, the glint of Kuro's perpetual wink to him and it is has the same gentle radiance of his mother's smile.

Her kagune is magnificent, indeed.

There's a dangerous gleam in her eyes that he has never seen before and it's strangely reassuring in the face of mortal peril. She is standing tall and proud and Kaneki looks at her, thinking that there is no better sight than this: savage and dangerous and so heart achingly beautiful.

Tsukiyama doesn't stand a chance. In a hailstorm of shards, her kagune punctuates the air and shreds the benches like scissors slicing through paper. Splinters of her kagune embedded themselves into Tsukiyama and he gurgles, chokes on the blood and slumps all to the ground, motionless.

Kaneki thinks that Tsukiyama had bitten off more than he can chew, that greedy bastard. It's no wonder he ended up choking. It's amusing, in a twisted sort of way that he can't be bothered to deal with now because Touka is advancing steadily towards Kimi, intent written on her face. Kaneki can almost see it happening; a fast stab downwards, the blood of an innocent and a lifetime of bitter regret. His mouth operates on its own and words drop out of them, talking about Yoriko and Hide and she flinches like she got stabbed in the back instead.

Touka spins around and there is burning anger in her gaze, hot and lashing and beneath that, sheer animal terror.

Fear is fear, whether you're the victor or the defeated. And hatred is hatred, even if it aimed at yourself.

Kaneki gets that. He knows that the war isn't fought out here in barbed words and heated glares. The war is quieter, buried deeper, but no less devastating. It's in her head and Kaneki can see the struggle in the way she holds herself, tensed lines and ragged breathing and he is so proud of her for fighting it.

There's a moment of silence before she lets out a snarl (like a wounded animal, a caged beast, a broken thing that fears but doesn't understand). The look she gives him now is laced with scorn and disgust – and underneath it all, betrayal.

She's gone before he can say anything, the displaced wind from her kagune sending up a swirl of plaster in the enfolding silence.

Nishiki lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, slumps to the ground in relief, but not before Kimi reaches down to twine their fingers together. Amidst the crumbling wreckage and bloodstained walls, they find solace in the aftermath of chaos and it thrums like a hymn beneath their collarbones; peace. They are rebuilding, one step at a time and Kaneki has to look away, feeling like an intruder on this private moment.

It is too fond, too tender, too raw and he has to blink a few times, rubs his eyes before he quietly exits.

He should return home to rest. He should treat his shoulder wound. He should so many other things, but his feet take him to higher ground anyway, heedless of his intentions.

Kaneki finds himself on the roof and realises that he's not alone. The wind streams past his face and wounds around a blue hair girl, looking smaller than life with how she curls up on herself with her arms wrapped around her knees. The jagged wings of her kagune burns and crackles, lashes of coiled energy that snips and sparks in the air. Above him, the stars dance and twirl in their everlasting dance, glinting merrily. It reminds him of when he was five years old again and how he lost Kuro. This time, the stars don't seem too cold or vicious. In fact, they seem to glint like the sharpness of diamonds, clear and pristine. He doesn't know what it is that compels him to do so but he walks over and kneels directly in front of her.

She doesn't say anything, nor does she need to. Touka's eyes speak more than enough for her.

When he wraps her in his arms, she doesn't resist his touch, but neither does she shifts. She is a still statue, made from ice and shards and sorrow, cold and unmoving in his arms, trapped in the frozen wastelands of her mind. It hits him then, how much he wants to wrap her in his arms forever, cradle her for all eternity, so that she will remain safe and protected in his embrace. But as much as he is tempted to do so, he knows just as well that she will suffocate, drown and wither under this kind of smothering protection. Her wings will never be allowed to spread and take flight because he is completely and utterly too scared to let her go.

But, this is where Kaneki shows that he has been paying attention to broken things. How they are, beneath their cracked exterior, strong and resilient and how they never give up even though they are marked with scars. And so he has to trust in her, and fight off the urge to protect her, must believe in the hidden strength of broken things to be remade and reborn and redeemed every aching step of the way.

So he lets her breathe, let her spread her wings and swallows his words, lets her ride out the emotional vortex storming her mind, believes that she will, she must, walk out of it and come to her own conclusions by herself. It takes a while, but she comes back, bits and pieces at a time and the blank, despairing look in her eyes gradually disappears, replaced with something brighter and softer.

She lets out a soft sigh and it is the sound of walls crumbling, empires falling and she leans into his embrace, her head thudding softly on his chest. Her kagune melts away to become embers of red and black before they, too, fade away into nothingness.

Kaneki doesn't say a word, stays by her side the whole time she's there and holds her all the way down.

It works out alright.

In the ashes of their demons, they are reclaimed, rediscovered and reborn.

* * *

She is a small broken thing, but he is the little boy, who grew up,

healing,

mending,

loving

broken things.

* * *

**For the past few weeks, I've been tearing my hair out over writing because it's really frustrating. What lies in my head is a beautiful vision, perfect and divine and what comes out on paper is complete poop. The imagination sings in celestial hymns and golden choirs but what it comes out seems like chimps grunting and shrieking. That's what writing feels like honestly, never really capturing the golden essence of my imagination.**

**But hey, it's fun. Frustrating but fun and so so worth it. (And look, I even get reviews! They're awesome ^^ )**

**Hahaha, anyway, this is an uplifting piece. No matter how much you've been broken, always rise from the ashes amidst an erupting volcano background with a finger pointed at your enemies' faces. Now that's style.**

***rises from the mountains on the back of a fire-breathing dragon***

**Till next time!**

**\- Malice**


	7. Curse of the Kakuja

**The previous chapter was met with overwhelming support and I was honestly humbled by the encouragements I received. It really means a lot, thank you! :) You have no idea how I was grinning like a fool - even in public. But, the problem with a brilliant chapter? It's that people have HIGHER expectations for the next chapter. The pressure is on.**

**I don't do well with expectations. You want to know why? It's because I take these expectations and proceed to set the whole thing into a blazing inferno, watch them blacken and wither into ashes as they scream shrilly in the air, their tortured flesh starting to bubble and melt. Eventually, everything falls silent. Ladies and gentlemen, cats and fire-breathing dragons, long dead sabre-tooth tigers and eldritch monstrosities from the next dimension, THIS chapter is the result of your expectations. **

**Enjoy (or not). :D**

**Thanks to sirgregsloth for beta-ing this chapter. Any remaining mistakes are mine.**

* * *

The word fills Touka with dread and melancholy. It speaks of a slithering kagune scampering around the walls, of jagged shards digging deeper in flesh and of a face being devoured of humanity.

When Touka sees the thing crawling from Kaneki, she doesn't say anything. Some small part of her is screaming and railing against the heavens, demanding answers and repentance for a shy bookworm but a larger, more distant part of her, is quiet.

That part knows what it is and recognises the black sheen of chitin and kagune on Kaneki's back.

_Kakuja._

* * *

At a young age of five, six or seven, (what is with the human's obsession with numbers?) she and Ayato creeped out from their covers.

"Follow him," Ayato mouthed, eyes dancing in mirth.

Touka returned a cheeky grin and they tiptoed their way to the door, where their father has already left.

They were good at this, they had been practising whenever dad wasn't looking and they were so good that they could sneak up on a skittish sparrow perching on a tree and caught it before it could even emit a surprised chirp.

Watching the world through the lens of youth, everything to them was a challenge. Bold, brazen and inherently curious, they didn't think twice when they slipped out to follow their father on his nightly excursions even though he had told them before that they were not to go out when it was dark. For once, his eyes were serious and there were no traces of warmth in them. His face seemed like it was carved from stone and Touka and Ayato won't admit it to anyone but just for that brief moment, they were scared _of_ their father.

But like all young children, they had selective amnesia and threw caution to the wind, ignoring their father's warning and the dark look in his eyes. Some things were better left forgotten, Touka thought, as she clambered over a fallen tree and helped Ayato who was struggling to get a foot over it. Later, there might be consequences for their actions but now, they were infused with boundless energy and the thrill of not being caught, secured in the belief of their skills.

To them, this was just a game.

_Quiet,_ her eyes conveyed and he nodded, pulled his whole body up and landed on the other side with a muffled thump. Both of them winced. Their dad simply kept walking and they both let out a mental sigh of relief.

_Ayato,_ a silent reprimand flashed in her eyes and he gave a sheepish grin.

They had now reached the graveyard. He was digging out something from the ground. The air smelled like rain and soil and they fidgeted in the bushes, excited by how far they have come without their dad being aware of their presence.

"Hck!"

With horrified eyes, they watched as their father collapsed to his knees. A shudder ran through his body and he clutched his abdomen. From his back, black RC sacs burst open to reveal thick armour.

"No, not again," he groaned, before letting out a pain filled noise between clenched teeth.

More and more black bands appeared, hardening and taking over the whole of his body, until it covered him from head to toe, a living and breathing kagune. It was an impenetrable armour and it covered all his skin, sealing his face up into a blank mask of dark metal.

Not a sound escaped their lips. They should do something, call out or run away, but fear has them rooted to the spot, breaths trembling in their throats.

That was the first time they saw their dad lose control of his kakuja. There may be countless other incidents before and after that, but such was the extent of Arata Kirishima's iron will that he only unleashed darker side when his children was not around.

With no knowledge about the state of their father's kakuja, the sight of the black chitin armour crawling over his face and hands and legs, left them mute.

There was a sudden crack and they saw the silhouette of their father dropped to all fours and he thrusted his hands into the dark soil. With immense strength, he dragged out a corpse from the womb of the earth. A sudden snap and the spinal column of the corpse bended over backwards and dangled like a broken doll in the clawed hands of Arata.

In a scramble, Touka covered her brother's eyes and he clung to her, dug his fingers hard enough to hurt. Her hands were wet and she knew without a doubt that both of their faces were streaming with tears. It was not a time for pride so she didn't call her brother out on this, just held him close and stared out of their bush hideout, trying to breathe as slowly and faintly as possible. Whoever that ghoul in the woods was, it was not her father.

The chinks in the armoured scales of his face widened and closed periodically, drawing in the slow, measured breaths of a predator. Along the length of its spine, there were serrated hooks sticking out, the curved edges of the spikes glinting in the night.

Touka could see the steam rising from its muzzle, hear the click click click of teeth and the jabbering, "Churn, churn, crash and burn, I have not one but two children. Must protect them all but it's always creeping, the dead stinks, it's in my clothes, in my eyes, in my head…Churn, churn, crash and burn… all the dead bodies are crawling in me. Must protect, protect what? How well do I know the dead? Churn and churn and blood and foe, must protect two children."

He giggled, a high pitch sound that edged around hysteria.

She hugged Ayato tight, both her hands trying to block her brother from the sight and sound of the taint of madness. She could feel her brother shaking in her arms and knew that she was shaking too.

The kagune was controlling her dad, pulling his limbs like a marionette in jerky and twitching motions. Steam rose gently from its flanks and its sightless head roved side to side, scanning the environment. A clawed hand pawed the ground and she could see how that simple movement gouged out the ground, leaving rents the size of her arm. The kakuja looked like black metal, curved and solid, but it also possessed a fluidity that allowed Touka to see the rise and fall of its flanks as it breathed, as well as the coiled muscles in the creature, powerful and deadly.

It threw back its head and let out a scream so sharp and piercing that she couldn't help but flinched. The animals in the undergrowth bolted from their burrow in a rush and winged creatures above head took to the sky in a flutter. The air filled with panic screeching.

Through it all, the black king of the forest surveyed the enfolding mayhem in glee.

A stray animal catapulted out into the clearing, fear so thick and choking that the animal ran straight into the one that caused so much fear in the first place. A small seam splitted the kakuja and for a moment, Touka's heart leapt. The kagune was breaking; her dad was trying to escape from –

She has to stop the bile from rising to her throat.

The seam had widened and revealed teeth. Bloodied teeth. Teeth that were currently biting down on the neck of the poor animal as it squealed and screamed within its grasp.

There was so much blood and the black king grinned and grinded his teeth, shearing flesh and bone as the animal crackled sickeningly in its jaws.

Fear clamped down strongly on her mind and locked her limbs tight. Her stomach wrenched itself in knots and a whimper built inside in her throat, waiting to be unleashed in the physical world and draw the black king's attention to how scared and vulnerable she was. With how hard her heart was pumping, it felt like her heart was going to burst out from her chest any moment. Soon, she's going to let out the tiniest whimper, the softest breath, the faintest scream and the black king will be in front of her in a flash, grinning with its bloody teeth.

This is it. She does not think she can hold out any longer.

In her head, something slowly slotted into place and that was when her vision goes gray. Everything she saw came from a long way, like there was gauze wrapped around her eyes.

All the screaming and frenzied thoughts in her head stilled, became frozen, stopped. Her tremoring ceased, the fear and worry draining away from her system like water down a drain.

In its place was…nothing.

Touka was calm. Peaceful. Serene.

She took a deep breath –

\- and started to count.

It has been one thousand eight hundred and seventy three seconds since they have left home.

Three hundred and eighty one headstones in the cemetery, fifty seven tree branches of a tree she is hiding behind and two strands of hair that clung to her lips as she shielded her brother from the carnage.

She briefly considered confronting her father in the hopes that the shock of seeing his own children could drag him out of this and discards the notion. No point risking their lives.

Her attention focused back to the man who has eight seams in his kakuja for breathing and exhaled at an average of twenty one times per minute. He has seven spikes in his kakuja, five of which were currently pierced through the chest cavity of an animal. It took approximately two seconds for him to tear it into half into a splatter of mist and gore. From her vantage point, she could see thirteen pair of pearly white ribs. Two red lungs dropped to the floor with a squelch and a trail of intestines dangled from its carcass.

Its bones were snapped forty two times and he was sucking up the marrow from the spinal cord with a slurp. She thought that there might be eleven litres of blood soaking the ground now and tightened her hands across her brother's eyes.

He crunched the bones ninety eight times, chewed the organs seventy seven times and took a total of seven minutes and forty five seconds to completely devour everything. Touka thought that that was the longest seven minutes and forty five seconds she has ever experienced.

When he has finished his meal, the kakuja shivered across his skin like electricity.

Like the crackling of plaster, the kakuja fell off slowly. Her dad wrenched himself from the biological weapon, yanking one arm, then the other, desperately freeing himself from the poisonous influence of his kakuja. It came off in scales, the plates dropping to the floor, before melting away in a mist of red and black.

Her dad emerged at last, whole and unharmed, bloodied and breathing hard (one, two, ten) before he finally looked up – and froze.

"Touka," he whispered, a haunted light appearing in his eyes, "Ayato…"

Touka could imagine the terror he must be feeling, how it must felt to have his demons exposed to his children.

He took a step forward and stumbled. He caught himself and he half shuffled, half limped all the way to them and enveloped them in one giant hug and it took a minute (or four or five) before Ayato's heartbeat returned to normal.

Touka's heart has stabilised a long time ago.

Her dad stank like dead bodies and blood, a sour tang of fear and fury that assailed her nostrils and left her strangely hungry.

They took three thousand two hundred and forty seconds to return home, as their dad carried them in his arms. Ayato has recovered, and from the depths of his mind, came to the conclusion that their dad was attacked by a creature and had to fight it, hence the violence. Ayato is already smiling, trusting his dad more than his senses, more than reality itself.

But Touka was different. Touka was there the entirely time and knew it to be a kakuja, the word tasting bitter and hard on her tongue.

She may hugged her father and told him it's okay, but it has been five thousand two hundred and ninety one days since she saw a kakuja spearing through her dad.

Touka never forgot.

* * *

She never thought that she would see a kakuja again. How wrong she was. How painfully wrong.

After the Aogiri Raid, Kaneki disappeared for a week. That's seven days of churning worry, one hundred and sixty eight hours of agonizing concern, and ten thousand and eighty seconds of guilt and anger storming her head.

She's a little worn out these past few days.

When she sees a familiar figure stepping through the doors of Anteiku, her heart leaps to her throat. When she sees how he can't stop trembling, she feels the first stab of worry – one of the many still to come. When she notices the cracks in his gaze, in his smile, in the way he holds himself, the flare of hope in her chest extinguishes cruelly.

Kaneki has return – but not all of him.

Kaneki has return – but he has the taint of kakuja seething in his blood.

Kaneki has return – but Touka can barely recognise him.

Touka is unsure of the new Kaneki, who is fragileruthlessvulnerablemadcrazydemonicfriend.

_Friend._

She sucks in a breath, focuses on the thought.

_Friend._

Even without Kaneki displaying his kakuja, Touka can feel it scratching against Kaneki's skin, trying to break out. His strained eyes and tired smiles, all speaks volumes about how hard he is trying to control it.

But Touka knows.

She's seen it.

Her dad always looks like this whenever he comes back splattered with blood from head to toe. There is rankness in the air, foul and acrid, biting into her senses and sparking of recognition: kakuja.

Lost in her own memories, she hangs back from the crowd of overly-enthusiastic ghouls who rush out to greet him with barely contained joy.

Irimi hugs him and Enji slings one arm around his shoulder and laughs boisterously. Tsukiyama – like the freak he is – spends too long staring at Kaneki with undisguised greed before it melts away to an overly dramatic welcome entirely in French. Meanwhile, Nishiki and Kimi greets him together and Hinami throws herself at Kaneki with bright joy and exclaims, "Welcome back!"

Hanging back, Touka and the manager watch them reunite.

"Are you not going to approach him?" Yoshimura rumbles, turning his head to look at the strangely reserved girl.

"I will," she says, "Just not now."

He nods and looks away, but not before placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Having a kakuja does not mean the end of him. It took me a long time but I managed to control mine."

"I know," she replies, a sneer curling her lips. "I just wish I was stronger so he wouldn't have to suffer the same fate as my dad."

"Your dad never used his kakuja to kill and it was his decision to eat ghouls rather than humans. He was a good man."

The words slip pass her lips from nowhere, startling even herself. "Then why did he leave me?"

The childishness of that sentence makes her want to take back the words but having spoken them out in the open reawakens the old hurt in her scars. Because it's true. Rabbit can get lonely and she misses her dad sometimes.

Yoshimura levels a sympathetic gaze at Touka. "He died to protect those he loved," he states simply. "You cannot fault him for that."

For a moment, she holds his stare fiercely, grips tight the resentment in her heart before she looks away, her anger draining out like water down the sink.

"Never forget you have us at Anteiku, Touka. We will always be your family if you would have us."

Her head bowed, Touka nods.

"Now," Yoshimura's eyes crinkle, "I think it's time for our top waitress in Anteiku to welcome back a dear old friend, don't you think?"

For a moment, Touka remains still. Then her shoulders loosen and tension seeps out from the lines of her body.

Lifting up her head, Touka strides forward.

"Hey shithead, enough dawdling. Get a change of clothes and dye your fucking hair already. You stick out like a sore thumb!"

Kaneki jerks his head up to meet her (soft) glare, and the barbed wire in his chest loosens its claws.

"Yes, ma'am!" He hastily apologises and ducks his head.

Watching her (dearly missed) co-worker scrambles up the stairs, Touka has to concede that Kaneki is still Kaneki, with his typical awkwardness and sincere smiles - even though his eyes are always sad and his hair is the colour of a thousand dead winters.

* * *

They stay in Anteiku for awhile, and they are like cautious animals learning to live with another. Skittish and painfully aware, they circle around and around, trying to regain the balance they once possessed.

Occasionally, when Touka catches Kaneki slipping into darkness, tormented by his kakuja, she cannot help the poisonous burst of fury in her chest. It is not his fault that Kaneki is broken (maybe it is), and she cannot resent him for his forced transformation, but a part of her is inherently angry at him, hates it that he was too weak, that he had broken into a million shards that cut her hands whenever she tries to piece him back together.

Touka tells him that she'll be with him every step of the way, that his nightmares cannot compare to what everyone will feel if they lose him. For he is too important to Anteiku, to the ghouls, to her, and even if he is spider webbed with madness, she will always be by his side.

She does not tell about him that she hates him a little.

There comes a lull in activity, where everything was peaceful and serene. Anteiku resumes their business, and Kaneki – with his hair dyed black – stays at the counter to prepare coffee for the customers.

Touka is always the one who will take the coffee from him and if their fingers brush against each other, then that is for Enji and Irimi to smile secretly among themselves.

* * *

These days, Kaneki looks steadier, less prone to shattering at any given time. His smiles are less melancholic and contain more warmth whenever he sees Hinami bouncing along with a new book in hand. The constant companionship of the ghouls at Anteiku serves as a therapy to him, smoothing over all the jagged shards that seem to be part of him nowadays.

It's somehow…nice.

Yet, there is still a distance in their interactions. Touka mourns the easy camaraderie they used to have, where they she can hit him because he's acting like a shithead again but now she can't even do that.

There are too many scars on his body and in his eyes, and as much as she hates treating him like he's a fragile person, the truth is that she's not even sure how to treat him anymore.

Everything is too different, too raw and she feels like she's just shooting in the dark sometimes, trying to make sense of a shy boy with gentle hands and one of the most wretched laughter she has ever heard.

Again, she is reminded of her father's kakuja, how it had tormented him in its bloodlust and this is not what she envisions for Kaneki. Not a future of pain and madness.

But what can she do?

First her father, and now Kaneki.

The people she loves are all rooted by their kakuja, and slowly but surely, they are all leaving her…alone.

* * *

Too much is at stake here. Sometimes she can see the regret in his eyes, and sometimes she can see malicious delight. The Kaneki in front of her is too fractured and unstable to be much help to her, least of all, to himself.

She doesn't understand why he has decided to walk the path of a kakuja user. Her heart aches for him in a way that no amount of consolation can seem to heal, how it twists painfully on itself for his future that lies only in ashes.

"Why did you do it?" She asks, staring at him from the doorway.

It is in the late afternoon, and sunlight lances through the windows to casts the reading room in warm shades of burnished gold. Seated on the couch in a simple black shirt and pants, Kaneki looks up from the book he is reading and watches her with murky eyes the tainted gleam of silver.

"Because I want to protect everyone," he says simply.

Touka cannot fault his sentiment but neither can she agree with it.

In a whisper of fabric, Kaneki pulls her towards him and they sit side by side on the couch, warmth seeping into each other. Lifting a hand, he runs it through her soft hair, enjoying how it feels like satin sliding through his fingers.

Touka shuts she eyes, leans into his touch.

"Because I want to protect our future," he murmurs into her ear.

When he withdraws his hand, she catches sight of his fingernails, black as tar.

Her heart wrenches painfully, reminded again that Kaneki isn't truly here, not fully, not whole, not complete.

Some part of him is skittering away, splashing in the pools of madness and chittering to itself. She knows it. He has cracked his finger a total of one hundred and seventy two times since he returned from his torture time with Aogiri.

At the thought, she has to stop the flare of ugly anger in her chest. There is poison in her veins that seeks absolute destruction for Aogiri. It burns with a vicious coldness that nestles deep in her chest. No matter how much she tries to forget it, it is still there, the dark part of her. That howls for revenge and retribution and wants to paint the whole world a bloody red for daring to lay a hand on Kaneki. Especially Jason.

She will fucking** ruin** him.

At the root of her fury, she knows the one single fact that leaves her helpless: She doesn't have enough _power._

It is the exact same thought that had spurred Kaneki to embrace his kakuja. There is the crux of matter, the reason why Kaneki was forced to undergo the change from a gentle bookworm into a brittle-edged boy whose sanity can slip away any moment, whose hands drip with crimson whenever he finds other ghouls to devour.

Looking at the man sitting next to her, lashes fanning his cheeks while he quietly reads, she knows that _power corrupts._ She should be happy with what she has now, that he isn't dead and that he has returned to Anteiku.

And yet, there is a distant roar, a dull pounding and a spreading ice.

In her mind's eye, she imagines crushing Aogiri's stronghold, strewing the area with the severed heads of her foes, shoving kagune after kagune in her mouth.

She thinks of bones snapping wetly, sinews torn and organs being ripped out, of broken whispers that fall on her deaf ears as her kagune whips madly in the smoke-filled air. She thinks of walking over the corpses, the squelch of blood and organs between her toes the best thing she has ever felt. She thinks of demons and fire claiming every Aogiri member, stripping them to a mess of boiling flesh and frenzied screams. She will not be satisfied, not until the inferno has blazed in all corners of the world, when wind shall cast their ashes far and wide, and the memory of Aogiri nothing but a distant dream. No, not even a dream.

They shall be reduced to **nothing.**

"What are you smiling for?" Kaneki asks, with a quirk of his lips as he glances at her from the corner of his eyes.

There are three hundred and forty nine pages in Kaneki's book, seven chairs in the room and two windows

"Nothing."

It has been four hundred and seventy days since she last told a lie.

* * *

Weeks pass, and Kaneki's eye bags grows and grows.

He's not the only one. Touka's are even worse.

Amidst the grey fog of exhaustion that buzzes in her mind after another sleepless night with Kaneki screaming at the top of his lungs, Touka slumps against Kaneki's sleeping form on the couch.

Even though the shop is busy and they are in desperate need of their co-workers' help, the manager silently slips out of the room, closing the door gently behind him. The young ones need all the rest they can get.

A kakuja is not an easy burden to bear, worse when the kakuja affects more than one party.

While Touka has been desperately trying to hide it, it doesn't fail to escape the manager's notice that she is more affected by Kaneki's transformation than she lets on.

For all Touka trustingly leans against Kaneki whenever they're tired and how often those two spend their time together, Yoshimura cannot squash the niggling suspicion that Touka's psyche is cracking under the influence of Kaneki's kakuja.

_Darkness begets darkness._

He notices that her gaze holds a ruthless malice whenever she catches sight of Aogiri's recent exploits on then news. It reminds him of a poisonous flower blooming in the dark, insidious and deadly.

He feels obligated to step in to help Kaneki, but Kaneki had approached him first. Kaneki had told him, "She shall save me."

There was no question who 'she' was.

"This is not something that love alone can overcome." Yoshimura frowned, ignoring the pang in his chest, of another time, another girl and another love. "I would know. It doesn't work like that."

And Kaneki is a young boy, fuelled with the passion and belief in creating a world where humans and ghouls can exist together in harmony. He held the same amount of conviction in his eyes then, and Yoshimura could do nothing in the face of such fierce determination.

"I know, Sir. But please, let me try."

In the end, he had given in to Kaneki. Not because he was honestly convinced by his argument, but because he is an old man, and he _wants_ to believe in a miracle - just one more - before he leaves this world. And if there is one person he knows who can achieve it, it would be him.

"Alright."

That is why he doesn't interfere even when he can hear Kaneki screaming in the middle of the night, shouting for people who have left and calling out for salvation where there is none at all. He remains silent even as he can hear flesh splitting and the constant scratching and slithering that comes after, a kakuja running amok.

Only when Yoshimura hears the quick footfalls of a girl rushing to Kaneki's room, and her voice, "Kaneki, look at me. I'm here, alright? Hush, there are no more demons now."

It takes hours before the crash of furniture ceases, before Kaneki stops laughing in the sick and demented way that have grown painfully constant nowadays.

It takes a long time before he returns to himself from his rampage, where he knows that broken bones are no match for the look in Touka's eyes when she looks at him.

When the next day dawns over, Yoshimura steps past the broken wreck of the door and see Touka's head on Kaneki's shoulder, both dozing in the morning light in the middle of a scene straight out of a disaster zone.

The look of peace on both of their faces is one that he will remember for a long time.

Now, they are alright. At ease. Safe.

In spite of this temporary respite, tonight there will be another incident, another breakdown, another fall.

This is the curse of a kakuja.

* * *

The days pass like the seasons do, slow enough that it feels like they have all the time in the world, and fast enough such that time slips through their fingers before they can even register its passing.

It comes as a shock one day, when the manager gathers everyone in the common room one day and tells him that a Dove attack is imminent.

"Where did you get the information from?" Kaneki asks.

A quick pain-filled glance at the blue and pink teacups that sit at the central cupboards is all the answer they need.

"Prepare yourselves," Yoshimura murmurs, and the ghouls feel a spear of ice being driven into their chest.

* * *

A few days later, as night falls to the earth and drenches everything into shadows, a whole forest of red and black eyes emerge from Anteiku.

They are the ghouls.

They are all armed and dangerous, not wanting to let the Doves ruin their stronghold. The ghouls will not let them destroy their home, not even if it kills them.

Besides, Kaneki is here to provide firepower and Irimi and Enji are exchanging savage grins, twisted delight dancing in their eyes as they anticipate the fight to come. It has been a long time since they have fought, and they are looking forward to it immensely.

The rabbit mask hiding her identity, Touka watches from the rooftops, glaring down at the CCG with burning eyes.

A whole platoon of soldiers are waiting for their commands (all waiting to die).

There is a brief faceoff, where each side regard each other in a silence so charged that not even the animals in the surrounding dared to make a sound. A chilly wind tears pass the regimens and the humans ready their weapons.

Everyone waits, for a heartbeat (one, two, _now_)

Chaos erupts.

Steel clashes into kagune, blood spurts in both humans and ghouls, and they fight for their own purpose.

Everyone is a hero if they die for a cause. The only question is, which cause is the right choice?

Touka doesn't know nor does she care. She focuses on providing aerial attacks, unleashing a volley of kagune spikes that spear into the humans down below. A thrill of victory shoots through her and a curl of delight wiggles in her chest as she watch twenty, twenty five, _twenty eight_ humans going down.

Kaneki is doing his best to maintain a wide range around Anteiku, as his kagune takes down seven Doves at the same time. He sweeps his kagune around and a dozen investigators are swept off their feet to land on their unlucky companions behind. He doesn't bother to hide the wide grin on his face the entire time.

Meanwhile, the older ghouls are just as adept in combat – if not, even better. Large swathes of wounded and dead Doves lie at the feet of the two feared gangs, as they continue their merciless attack on the Doves. _Spare no one_, seems to be the motto and the ghouls take vicious satisfaction in that regard.

The battle continues on for an indefinite among of time, in shouts of commands and whispers of delight, in ringing steel and spurting blood, the battlefield is soaked in bloodshed.

Just when the ghouls think that they have the winning hand, the ranks of the soldiers part to reveal the Special Division with quinque armour. Those investigators emerge with grim expressions on their faces and the glint of processed kagune on their bodies sends a wave of hatred and fury in the ghouls.

For a moment, the ghouls pause in their attacks to regale these investigators with a cold glare promising bloody revenge on their enemies. Such is the intensity of their hatred that none of the other investigators dare to attack the now silent ghouls, who give off the most bloodthirsty aura they have ever witnessed.

It is barbaric enough that the Doves rip out the kagune from dead ghouls, they have to use a ghoul's most precious biological weapon to murder other ghouls.

It is _unforgivable._

Narrowing her eyes, Touka jumps off the roof and corners one of the quinque armour investigator in a flash of rage. Shocked out of their stupor, the other ghouls resume their attacks with renewed precision and strength, fuelled by fury for their fallen comrades. The rest of the quinque armour investigators steel themselves and join in the fray.

Landing in a perfect crouch, Touka stalks towards the Dove, intent on ripping away the kagune from him and tearing him apart limb from limb. When she gets closer to him, a strange niggling prods her mind.

The quinque gleams under the light of the moon, sleek and deadly and strangely familiar. As they trade off blows, the quinque flexes and digs deeper into human flesh, causing the investigator to cough and spit out blood.

The opening is enough; Touka goes in for the kill when the familiarity in her mind explodes into recognition. She reels back from the shock and her kagune grazes the side of the kagune instead of skewering the man.

There is a moment where she forgets to breath and everything is a dizzying rush of colour and noise. Her heart contracts and it's like a hand has made its way deep into her chest cavity and crushed her heart. Pulverized it.

The world is bathed in flickering fire, but the darkness of the armour seems to swallow light around itself, sucking it into an endless void. All her attention is focused on it, smaller than life but larger than death.

_Kakuja_, the armour taunts.

And she cannot help but whisper, "Father."

The vermin using the kakuja shouts something and she jumps backwards. A millisecond later, the clang of quinque steel on the floor rings loudly.

There is no mistaking it now. That kakuja is sending off a faint undercurrent, calling out to her in a wordless whisper. She can feel it in her bones, her heart is crying out to answer the thrum of recognition.

They are using her _father's_ kakuja.

"Damn, this Arata armour is rather sluggish today," the vermin comments, puzzledly looking at his quinque. He shrugs, and looks up.

Arata, he called it Arata. He called her father's kakuja Arata. It's him, there are no mistakes.

It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father. It's father.

\- and the Dove is _using her father's kakuja._

Unforgivable.

A line frays, the edges slowly unravelling. The line -

_Snap._

The Dove screams and holds his broken arm to his chest.

Something in her is unspooling, awakening from the darkest regions of her mind, stepping out into the world with a grin.

_Snap._

She breaks both of his knee caps and he collapses to the ground.

He is trying to escape, dragging himself away with his arms. She cannot have that.

_Snap._

She breaks open the kakuja easily, it seems to yield in her hands but she doesn't pay it much attention. Not now.

She breaks one rib, snapping it off with a sharp crack.

And one more.

And another.

And so on.

A hundred trillion cells, two hundred and six bones and seven hundred muscles in the human body. How she will enjoy taking it all apart.

Very.

Slowly.

Time passes, she's not sure how long. The moment she comes back to herself she looks down to see a large splatter of organs and blood around her. Only the quinque armour remains, as black as ink and as constant as night.

Realising what she had done, she is suddenly, awfully frightened. She is just a young girl who got lost in the woods and she is alone and scared in a dark place. Fear hammers at her heart as the battle continues on while she watches, mute with shock at her own actions.

"Father?" She calls out in a small voice.

An answering thrum in the kakuja, so faint as to be almost imperceptible.

"I'm… scared. I did something really bad."

The kakuja pulses out warmth, whether it generated the warmth or it was just the residual heat from the human body, no one knows.

"What do I do now?"

The kakuja rocks side to side, so slowly that it would be so easy to miss it.

Touka is painfully reminded that she is alone. Her father had left her and now Kaneki is slowly losing control and he would be gone before dawn, lost in the sea of madness.

She has no one left.

She is alone from womb to tomb, and she is just another lonely scream into the void.

Kakuja is the only thing she recognises, the last fraying string that tethers her to them.

She looks at the kakuja, feel the hardness of the armour and the ever-present chill of it biting into her fingers.

The curse of a kakuja, first her dad and now Kaneki.

All of them are leaving her…_alone._

It's time for her to wake up now. She has been weak all her life and that's why she is always alone. Now is her time for redemption.

She is tired of being lonely all the time.

"I miss you," she whispers brokenly and deals with sorrow only a ghoul would: _devour._

Somewhere, someone with white hair is shouting at her to leave the armour alone. But how can she do that? This is her father.

She brings the kakuja to her lips.

Somewhere, a trail of tears silently drips down a girl's cheeks while her hands are stained with red.

Somewhere, somewhere far far away, someone is asking her in her own voice, "How many numbers are there from one to thousand?"

The kakuja tastes of blood and tears.

* * *

She does not remember much after that (nor does she want to).

There are flashes:

A boy with snow white hair shakes his head and mutters, shaking his head from side to side, "No, no, no, this can't be happening. Stay with me, Touka. You have to …."

She slips away into a cool blackness for a while and when she comes back, warm blood is gushing into her mouth and a voice is talking to her, low with urgency

"…listen to me, don't let it control you. Stop eating so much, it's going to make it worse…"

She drifts away in a haze of blood and fire, catching occasional glimpses of silhouettes that make no sense to her. All she knows are shadowy figures dropping around her like flies, and she feels like a queen, no one can stand up to her; they shall kneel to her reign.

There is one pesky vermin who constantly evades her grasp. Her kagune seems stronger and more powerful, and it feels like she has more than one on her back. She thinks there are four of them now, all jagged blades and wickedly sharp edges sprouting out like poisoned flowers.

It might be her kakuja or it might be her kagune.

She honestly doesn't care.

The boy with white hair constantly dodges her attacks and he keeps shouting at her in a tone laced with desperation, "This isn't you, Touka. It's just the kakuja and you have to control it. I know you're feeling sad about your father, and you're angry with the Doves. Heck, I know some part of you regrets what I have become and hates me for it and it's fine. But just trust me on this Touka, you do not want it to control you. Please, Touka. For me, for Hinami, for Yoriko, for everyone at Anteiku that believes in you. _Wake up_."

His face is shiny with tears. She doesn't know why he is so sad; she is the happiest in what has been a long time. It's okay; she shall show this ghoul how to be happy. She will teach him.

She smiles.

This is a city of fourteen million three hundred and eighty four thousand and seven hundred delicious prey.

All waiting to be **slaughtered.**

* * *

Carrying the slim girl on his back, Kaneki trudges to the safe house. The faint breathing from Touka is the only sign that she is still alive, considering the amount of blood on her clothes. Unsurprisingly, none of the blood came from her.

The back of her coat is torn and ragged, her kakuja having ripped apart the seams when it was unleashed. Always the chivalrous gentleman, Kaneki had wrapped his jacket around her and unconsciously, she had pressed her nose closer to the jacket, breathing in the comforting scent.

As his feet crunches on the snow, Touka sniffles and draws herself closer to him.

When the ukaku ghoul had gone berserk, Kaneki had tried his best to take her down without hurting her. It was only when Irimi chided that he was being too easy on her that he decided that he could not do it. Enji was responsible for diverting her attention while Irimi waited for the perfect moment where Touka was distracted and she could swiftly land a heavy blow to the side of Touka's head. Touka had blinked, looked a little dazed, before collapsing into Kaneki's arms.

He is still in shock over the affair, how he was so busy in the fight that he forgot to mention to Touka that the CCG possessed her father's kakuja. All it took was for him to lose himself in the bloodlust and when he looked up, Touka had tipped over the edge of despair and was shoving the pieces of kakuja in her mouth.

Too late, he is always too late to save anyone. He can't even save himself, how can he even save her?

* * *

Touka wakes up slowly and reluctantly from the pleasant stillness of sleep, her head warm and fuzzy with exhaustion. There is a moment where she thinks she is in her room, and she should go make a cup of coffee before the stark reality comes crashing down on her.

She sits up immediately and has to hold down the wave of nausea that presses against her throat. Like hammers to her skull, her memories slam into her and she presses her back against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest and one hand over her mouth as her eyes gaze unseeingly into the distance. Her whole body is wracked with tremors and her breathing has gone fast and shallow. She curls up on herself and flings the whole blanket over her head, afraid to show her face to the world.

This is the scene in which Kaneki walks in on her and he averts his gaze, regret etched on his face.

History is repeating itself. He looks at his nails, notices how pitch black they are and his face twists into a bitter smile.

With fingernails that dig deep into her skin as she hugs herself and shake, Touka's nails are still pink.

_Not yet_, Kaneki thinks.

_But soon, very soon._

Whatever he has become, it is not enough. Kaneki has failed to protect Touka and failed to prevent her from walking the same path as him. Most importantly, he has failed himself. Under Yamori's torture, he had broken.

There is no excuse, he was weak and he broke and now he has a kakuja for the rest of his life, a painful reminder about what he had sacrificed (what he will sacrifice).

There is nothing he can do now, no way to rip out the infestation once it has taken root in the bones. Deeper than that, a kakuja is a permanent mark on their souls, staining it a pitch black madness that bleeds out from their eyes. It is a nightmare every day, where even waking up is worse than sleeping, where reality and dreams can blur and go indistinct, until he's not sure who he killed. His friends or himself.

A kakuja is a tortuous journey, eating away at his soul and mind until one day, he knows that he would be reduced to nothing.

Looking at the girl, he is so very sorry for Touka and wishes he can help, but he knows that a kakuja is a personal hell.

Each kakuja manifests the user's deepest fears and insecurities, drawing them out and playing on them like a symphony. He would know; he experienced it before and he cannot help the sneer that twists his lips.

He wonders who would be left to pull them out of their own hell now.

* * *

Due to their kakuja, they no longer visit the other ghouls.

It's not safe.

They have found an apartment in a small little corner so deserted that barely anyone goes there at all. It suits them well. Kaneki writes letters to the manager some times, updating him on their condition but the letters are getting fewer and his handwriting is getting more jagged.

Similarly, Touka writes to Yoriko and Hinami and there came a day where both her handwriting and Kaneki's handwriting was equally jagged, equally scrawled.

They stop writing after that.

* * *

They wake each other up with nightmares.

There are screams in Touka's throat and blood coated underneath her nails. Kaneki cracks his fingers and jabbers to himself a string of numbers.

Their kakuja slams into the walls and crawls through every shadowed crevices, slides one way and then jerks away to another direction. They creep and skitter across the ceiling before twisting on itself into a spiral and thrashes around with a mind of its own.

In the midst of the chaos, their hands find each other and they grip; hard.

A kakuja is madness and pain, dredging up memories that are sticky with blood and makes her want to throw up and laugh at the same time.

"One thousand minus seven is nine hundred and ninety three. Nine hundred and ninety three minus seven is nine hundred and eighty six. Nine hundred and eighty six minus seven is nine hundred and seventy nine…"

"From one to nine there are nine numbers and ten to twenty there are twenty numbers and nine plus twenty is twenty nine. There are twenty nine numbers from one to twenty. From twenty one to thirty there are twenty numbers. From one to thirty there are forty nine numbers…"

A whisper of a memory coalesces, and it seems like her dad is by her side now, whispering to her gently, "Churn, churn, crash and burn, I have not one but two children. Must protect them all but it's always creeping, the dead stinks, it's in my clothes, in my eyes, in my head…Churn, churn, crash and burn…"

In the midst of the pitch black darkness, she thinks that this is the closest she has ever been to both her father and Kaneki. She can understand the burden they carry now, and some part of her is inherently pleased about that. If she closes her eyes and concentrates on the warmth of Kaneki's hand in her own, she thinks that there is another softer touch on her head, a hand gently caressing her hair.

_I missed you both, you know_, she whispers.

Her father and Kaneki both laugh, _We know._

_Welcome to the club, our precious Touka._

* * *

Sometimes they forget, each getting lost in their own heads even though they basically share the same apartment

Occasionally, Touka walks in on Kaneki one day and doesn't recognise him until she has him by the throat, lifting him off the ground with a vicious snarl and slamming into the wall.

It's not just her only.

Kaneki returns home one day and finds a girl he doesn't know sitting on the couch. He didn't think; he speared her with his kagune thoroughly.

It takes them days and weeks and months to relearn themselves and each other, but they realise that there is one thing that always tie them together: the love for coffee.

They meet once, when they have chosen the same prey, and their mind is a blank cacophony of chaos.

Watching each other with burning red eyes, they circle around their prey. A whisper of air and both of their kakuja slithers out.

He is watching her with blank eyes and his head tilts to the side, a subtle warning to 'back off'.

Her kakuja flares out. '_You_ fuck off.'

He snarls at that and his centipede kakuja raise their heads, poised to strike.

In a flash of movement, her shadow-wings kakuja slash the air.

The centipede kakuja twitches, before erupting into a geyser of blood and gore.

Stunned, he lets out a hiss, more angry than pained, and with remarkable speed, his kakuja regenerates back. It coils into itself and shoots forward, slamming into the girl's abdomen and tearing out a ragged chunk of flesh.

Before he can blink, his kakuja separates into five pieces and drops to the floor with a squelch.

The winged ghoul grins, wild and savage, even as red blooms through her clothes.

He finds himself returning the grin, the thrill of a challenge thrumming through him. If he wins, this ghoul's kakuja will feed him for weeks. It will be perfect. He will devour her.

They explode into action again, this time he is faster and he dislocates her right shoulder with a sickening pop and rips out the flesh from her shoulder with his teeth. She snarls and holds the wound close to herself, an injured animal briefly overcome with pain.

Chewing, he marvels at the soft texture of her flesh and how it oozes silky blood that slides down his throat.

He swallows and licks his lips, eyeing her hungrily.

That's when he realises that his back feels lighter than before and with a twist of his head, he finds himself meeting two empty stumps where his kakuja used to be.

Turning back, he catches sight of the winged ghoul who is holding _his_ kakuja in _her_ hands. _And she's eating them _in front of him, crunching on them with an insolent raise of an eyebrow.

She almost laughs at how easy it has been, drawing him nearer to her until he was too distracted to realise that she has already gotten what she wanted: food.

Ripping another hunk of kakuja, she licks her lips and gives him a bloody grin.

Before they resume their attacks, a nearby window opens and the scent of coffee blooms in the air. They can hear the clinks of coffee cups being used and the gurgle of water as it boils.

A continuous dribble of liquid indicates the coffee being poured into the cup and a faint sigh of satisfaction. The smell of coffee perfumes the air even more strongly.

There is something niggling in the back of her head, insisting that fighting is pointless between both of them. But why? Why is it pointless?

Buried under an avalanche of madness, a word presses itself against her mind, _Anteiku_.

She doesn't know what it is, what it means, but the word is soothing, somehow. Like coming home after a long day. Nothing clear emerges in her head but the feeling of warmth and safety and comfort blossoms in her chest.

Opposite her, the other ghoul is lifting up his head to sniff at the air like a bloodhound. Confusion scrunches up his face. His stunted kakuja retreats back into itself, lost.

Meanwhile, her four-winged kakuja flexes and droops, the upward tilt of her wings slowly descending until they are folded up behind her back.

They stay there for a long time, breathing in the strange and alien (familiar and warm) scent of coffee. Bit by bit, their kakuja recedes into flesh, leaving a patch of pale skin.

Two pairs of tired eyes meet and they stumble into one another, holding each other in their arms, an embrace for two monsters.

Other incidents like this happen more frequently. They get hurt, they heal from their wounds and they move on, step by aching step. Even though it feels like they're crumbling from inside out, they entwine their hands together and face the world with brave hearts (and damaged minds).

It's not much, but it's what they have.

* * *

A year passes and they are still alive.

Another, and they can smile with genuine joy.

Three years pass and they have found their own place in the world, carved it out from sweat, blood and tears.

Touka has a kakuja and it is fully formed and equally deadly as Kaneki's. He is skittering along the walls while his kakuja flares out from his back like a scorpion's tail.

And she's feeling fine, feeling happier than she has felt for a long time, free from her burdens of her normal pathetic life.

After many encounters with humans and ghouls alike, Touka still does not understand why they are so attached to numbers but she always makes it a point to ask them.

Rusty chains jangle and frightened eyes meet hers. The scent of fear is so strong her mouth waters in anticipation. Bloodstains paint the entire cell a vivid crimson; it drips down from the walls, stains the metal chains red and oozes from numerous gaping wounds.

She picks up a syringe, and checks whether it has enough liquid inside.

It does.

Grinning, she grabs hold of a tuft of black hair. The person shrieks in pain and begins to blubber, "Please stop, let me go, I don't want this anymore, just kill me already, please please please..." He trails off in a whimper.

With practised ease, she jabs the tip of the needle into his eye and pushes down the plunger. He screams and writhes in her grasp.

When all the liquid has been injected, she yanks out the needle and it comes out with a squelch.

He sobs pitifully and holds his head in his hands. His fingernails are all black.

Two cells down, Touka can hear Kaneki enjoying himself, the tell-tale signs of bone cracking and screaming has started. His kakuja is already unleashed, she can hear it scratching at the bloody walls, can almost see how it writhes and twists and squirms in living flesh while the screaming goes on and on.

And then she hears it: laughter.

A demonic laughter that weaves in undertones of hysteria and madness in it.

She smiles, always nice to know Kaneki is having fun.

"What's one thousand minus seven?" The familiar voice wounds throughout the cells, reaching her ears. There's an audible_ crack_ and a whimper of fear.

It's time for her to get to business now that Kaneki has already started.

"Hey," she says, and looks down, "how many numbers are there from 1 to 1000?"

_Snap._

Now, the screaming starts.

* * *

**Just a reminder that this an AU where Kaneki returned to Anteiku after the Raid. This oneshot is an exploration on Kaneki regretting his actions and truly understanding the dark nature of his kakuja. Watching Touka struggle with her own kakuja, Kaneki pesonally witness the effects of how a kakuja affects others. Now he knows exactly what Touka felt when she knew he had a kakuja. And this bit of self awareness of his own actions is enough to spiral him further into his own depression and despair as he was the one who had hurt her with his actions. As for Touka herself, she gave in to her anger and hatred. Additionally, the people in her life are always leaving her alone and she's helpless to prevent them from leaving. Giving in to despair, she chose the one things that will grant her power to be with those she loves, but also promise her a lifetime of suffering: kakuja. **

**(And also, did anyone catch the part where Kaneki bit Touka's shoulder? That's payback for what Touka did to him when they fought with Tsukiyama. Karma, guys!)**

**There are definitely more hidden meanings and interpretations, and I would love it if you can share with me some of your thoughts and ideas. :)**

**To all the people who thought this chapter is going to be a golden ray of light warming your face, please allow me a moment of hysterical laughter. **


End file.
